^^ 


OiL^cL    M.    I  ^  /^ 


CARRY  ON 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 


THE  GARDEN  WITHOUT  WALLS 

THE  RAFT 

SLAVES  OF  FREEDOM 

FLORENCE  ON  A  CERTAIN  NIGHT 
AND  OTHER  POEMS 


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in  2008  with  funding  from 

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MKITENAM   CONINGSBY  UAWSON 

CAN-AIUAN    FIELD    ARTII.T.ERV 


CARRY   ON 

LETTERS    IN    WAR-TIME 


BY 

CONING SB Y  DAWSON 

NOVELIST   AND    SOLDIER 


WITH  AN  INTRODUCTION   AND   NOTES 

BY  HIS  FATHER,  W.  J.  DAWSON 


FRONTISPIECE 


NEW  YORK:  JOHN  LANE  COMPANY 
LONDON:  JOHN  LANE,  THE  BODLEY  HEAD 
TORONTO:     S.    B.    GUNDY     '.-     •/     MCMXVII 


Copyright,  19 1 7, 
Bv  John  Lane  CoaaPAMv 


m      CCl  I  mc/b'^ 


WHEN  THE  WAR'S  AT  AN  END 

At  length  when  the  war's  at  an  end 
And  we're  just  ourselves, — you  and  I, 

And  we  gather  our  lives  tip  to  mend, 

We,  who've  learned  how  to  live  and  to  die: 

Shall  we  think  of  the  old  ambition 

For  riches,  or  how  to  grow  wise, 
When,  like  Lazarus  freshly  arisen, 

We've  the  presence  of  Death  in  our  eyes? 

Shall  we  dream  of  our  old  life's  passion, — 

To  toil  for  our  heart's  desire, 
Whose  souls  War  has  taken  to  fashion 

With  molten  death  and  with  fire  ? 

I  think  we  shall  crave  the  laughter 

Of  the  wind  through  trees  gold  with  the  sun^ 

When  our  strife  is  all  finished, — after 
The  carnage  of  War  is  done. 

Just  these  things  will  then  seem  worth  while: — 
How  to  make  Life  more  wondrously  sweet; 

How  to  live  with  a  song  and  a  smile, 
How  to  lay  our  lives  at  Love's  feet. 

Eric  P.  Dawson, 
Sub.  Lieut.  R.  N.  V.  R. 


INTRODUCTION 

THE  letters  in  this  volume  were  not  written 
for  publication.  They  are  intimate  and 
personal  in  a  high  degree.  They  would  not  now 
be  published  by  those  to  whom  they  are  ad- 
dressed, had  they  not  come  to  feel  that  the  spirit 
and  temper  of  the  writer  might  do  something  to 
strengthen  and  invigorate  those  who,  like  him- 
self, are  called  on  to  make  great  sacrifices  for 
high  causes  and  solemn  duties. 

They  do  not  profess  to  give  any  new  informa- 
tion about  the  military  operations  of  the  Allies; 
this  is  the  task  of  the  publicist,  and  at  all  times 
is  forbidden  to  the  soldier  in  the  field.  Here  and 
there  some  striking  or  significant  fact  has  been 
allowed  to  pass  the  censor;  but  the  value  of  the 
letters  does  not  lie  in  these  things.  It  is  found 
rather  in  the  record  of  how  the  dreadful  yet 
heroic  realities  of  war  affect  an  unusually  sensi- 
tive mind,  long  trained  in  moral  and  romantic 
idealism;  the  process  by  which  this  mind  adapts 
itself  to  unanticipated  and  incredible  conditions, 
to  acts  and  duties  which  lie  close  to  horror,  and 
are  only  saved  from  being  horrible  by  the  efficacy 


«  INTRODUCTION 

of  the  spiritual  effort  which  they  evoke.  Hating 
the  brutalities  of  War,  clearly  perceiving  the 
wide  range  of  its  cruelties,  yet  the  heart  of  the 
writer  is  never  hardened  by  its  daily  commerce 
with  death;  it  is  purified  by  pity  and  terror,  by 
heroism  and  sacrifice,  until  the  whole  nature 
seems  fresh  annealed  into  a  finer  strength. 

The  intimate  nature  of  these  letters  makes  it 
necessary  to  say  something  about  the  writer. 

Coningsby  Dawson  graduated  with  honours  in 
history  from  Oxford  in  1905,  and  in  the  same 
year  came  to  the  United  States  with  the  intention 
of  taking  a  theological  course  at  Union  Sem- 
inary. After  a  year  at  the  Seminary  he  reached 
the  conclusion  that  his  true  lifework  lay  in  liter- 
ature, and  he  at  once  began  to  fit  himself  for  his 
vocation.  In  the  meantime  his  family  left  Eng- 
land, and  we  had  made  our  home  in  Taunton, 
Massachusetts.  Here,  in  a  quiet  house,  amid 
lawns  and  leafy  elms,  he  gave  himself  with  inde- 
fatigable ardour  to  the  art  of  writing.  He  wrote 
from  seven  to  ten  hours  a  day,  producing  many 
poems,  short  stories,  and  three  novels.  Few 
writers  have  ever  worked  harder  to  attain  liter- 
ary excellence,  or  have  practised  a  more  austere 
devotion  to  their  art.  I  often  marvelled  how  a 
young  man,  fresh  from  a  brilliant  career  at  the 
greatest  of  English  Universities,  could  be  content 


INTRODUCTION  9 

with  a  life  that  was  so  widely  separated  from 
association  with  men  and  affairs.  I  wondered 
still  more  at  the  patience  with  which  he  endured 
the  rebuffs  that  always  await  the  beginner  in 
literature,  and  the  humility  with  which  he  was 
willing  to  learn  the  hard  lessons  of  his  appren- 
ticeship in  literary  form.  The  secret  lay,  no 
doubt,  in  his  secure  sense  of  a  vocation,  and  his 
belief  that  good  work  could  not  fail  in  the  end 
to  justify  itself.  But,  not  the  less,  these  four 
years  of  obscure  drudgery  wore  upon  his  spirit, 
and  hence  some  of  the  references  in  these  letters 
to  his  days  of  self-despising.  The  period  of 
waiting  came  to  an  end  at  last  with  the  publica- 
tion in  191 3  of  his  Garden  Without  Walls, 
which  attained  immediate  success.  When  he 
speaks  in  these  letters  of  his  brief  burst  of  fame, 
he  refers  to  those  crowded  months  in  the  Fall  of 
191 3,  when  his  novel  was  being  discussed  on 
every  hand,  and,  for  the  first  time,  he  met  many 
writers  of  established  reputation  as  an  equal. 

Another  novel.  The  Raft,  followed  The 
Garden  Without  Walls.  The  nature  of  his  life 
now  seemed  fixed.  To  the  task  of  novel-writing 
he  had  brought  a  temperament  highly  idealistic 
and  romantic,  a  fresh  and  vivid  imagination,  and 
a  thorough  literary  equipment.  His  life,  as  he 
planned  it,  held  but  one  purpose  for  him,  outside 


lo  INTRODUCTION 

the  warmth  and  tenacity  of  its  affections — the 
triumph  of  the  efficient  purpose  in  the  adequate 
expression  of  his  mind  in  literature.  The  aus- 
terity of  his  long  years  of  preparation  had  left 
him  relatively  indifferent  to  the  common  prizes 
of  life,  though  they  had  done  nothing  to  lessen 
his  intense  joy  in  life.  His  whole  mind  was  con- 
centrated on  his  art.  His  adventures  would  be 
the  adventures  of  the  mind  in  search  of  ampler 
modes  of  expression.  His  crusades  would  be  the 
crusades  of  the  spirit  In  search  of  the  realities 
of  truth.  He  had  received  the  public  recognition 
which  gave  him  faith  in  himself  and  faith  in  his 
ability  to  achieve  the  reputation  of  the  true  artist, 
whose  work  is  not  cheapened  but  dignified  and 
broadened  by  success.  So  he  read  the  future, 
and  so  his  critics  read  it  for  him.  And  then, 
sudden  and  unheralded,  there  broke  on  this  quiet 
life  of  intellectual  devotion  the  great  storm  of 
1 91 4.  The  guns  that  roared  along  the  Marne 
shattered  all  his  purposes,  and  left  him  face  to 
face  with  a  solemn  spiritual  exigency  which  ad- 
mitted no  equivocation. 

At  first,  in  common  with  multitudes  more  ex- 
perienced than  himself,  he  did  not  fully  compre- 
hend the  true  measure  of  the  cataclysm  which 
had  overwhelmed  the  world.  There  had  been 
wars  before,  and  they  had  been  fought  out  by 


INTRODUCTION  ii 

standing  armies.  It  was  incredible  that  any  war 
should  last  more  than  a  few  months.  Again  and 
again  the  world  had  been  assured  that  war  would 
break  down  with  its  own  weight,  that  no  war 
could  be  financed  beyond  a  certain  brief  period, 
that  the  very  nature  of  modern  warfare,  with  its 
terrible  engines  of  destruction,  made  swift  de- 
cisions a  necessity.  The  conception  of  a  British 
War  which  involved  the  entire  manhood  of  the 
nation  was  new,  and  unparalleled  in  past  history. 
And  the  further  conception  of  a  war  so  vast  in 
its  issues  that  it  really  threatened  the  very  exist- 
ence of  the  nation  was  new  too.  Alarmists  had 
sometimes  predicted  these  things,  but  they  had 
been  disbelieved.  Historians  had  used  such 
phrases  of  long  past  struggles,  but  often  as  a 
mode  of  rhetoric  rather  than  as  the  expression 
of  exact  truth.  Yet,  in  a  very  few  weeks,  it 
became  evident  that  not  alone  England,  but  the 
entire  fabric  of  liberal  civilisation  was  threat- 
ened by  a  power  that  knew  no  honour,  no  re- 
straints of  either  caution  or  magnanimity,  no 
ethic  but  the  armed  might  that  trampled  under 
blood-stained  feet  all  the  things  which  the  com- 
mon sanction  of  centuries  held  dearest  and  fair- 
est. 

Perhaps,   if   Coningsby  had  been  resident  in 
England,  these  realities  of  the  situation  would 


12  INTRODUCTION 

have  been  immediately  apparent.  Residing  in 
America,  tlie  real  outlines  of  the  struggle  were 
a  little  dimmed  by  distance.  Nevertheless,  from 
the  very  first  he  saw  clearly  where  his  duty  lay. 
He  could  not  enlist  immediately.  He  was  bound 
in  honour  to  fulfil  various  literary  obligations. 
His  latest  book,  Slaves  of  Freedom,  was  in 
process  of  being  adapted  for  serial  use,  and  its 
publication  would  follow.  He  set  the  completion 
of  this  work  as  the  period  when  he  must  enlist; 
working  on  with  difficult  self-restraint  toward 
the  appointed  hour.  If  he  had  regrets  for  a 
career  broken  at  the  very  point  where  it  had 
reached  success  and  was  assured  of  more  than 
competence,  he  never  expressed  them.  His  one 
regret  was  the  effect  of  his  enlistment  on  those 
most  closely  bound  to  him  by  affections  which 
had  been  deepened  and  made  more  tender  by  the 
sense  of  common  exile.  At  last  the  hour  came 
when  he  was  free  to  follow  the  imperative  call 
of  patriotic  duty.  He  went  to  Ottawa,  saw  Sir 
Sam  Hughes,  and  was  offered  a  commission  in 
the  Canadian  Field  Artillery  on  the  completion 
of  his  training  at  the  Royal  Military  College,  at 
Kingston,  Ontario.  The  last  weeks  of  his  train- 
ing were  passed  at  the  military  camp  of  Pete- 
wawa  on  the  Ottawa  River.  There  his  family 
was  able  to  meet  him  in  the  July  of  191 6.    While 


INTRODUCTION  13 

we  were  with  him  he  was  selected,  with  twenty- 
four  other  officers,  for  immediate  service  in 
France;  and  at  the  same  time  his  two  younger 
brothers  enHsted  in  the  Naval  Patrol,  then  being 
recruited  in  Canada  by  Commander  Armstrong. 

The  letters  in  this  volume  commence  with  his 
departure  from  Ottawa.  Week  by  week  they 
have  come,  with  occasional  interruptions;  mud- 
stained  epistles,  written  in  pencil,  in  dug-outs  by 
the  light  of  a  single  candle,  in  the  brief  moments 
snatched  from  hard  and  perilous  duties.  They 
give  no  hint  of  where  he  was  on  the  far-flung 
battle-line.  We  know  now  that  he  was  at  Albert, 
at  Thiepval,  at  Courcelette,  and  at  the  taking  of 
the  Regina  trench,  where,  unknown  to  him,  one 
of  his  cousins  fell  in  the  heroic  charge  of  the 
Canadian  infantry.  His  constant  thoughtfulness 
for  those  who  were  left  at  home  is  manifest  in 
all  he  writes.  It  has  been  expressed  also  in  other 
ways,  dear  and  precious  to  remember :  in  flowers 
delivered  by  his  order  from  the  battlefield  each 
Sabbath  morning  at  our  house  in  Newark,  in 
cables  of  birthday  congratulations,  which  arrived 
on  the  exact  date.  Nothing  has  been  forgotten 
that  could  alleviate  the  loneliness  of  our  separa- 
tion, or  stimulate  our  courage,  or  make  us  con- 
scious of  the  unbroken  bond  of  love. 

The  general  point  of  view  in  these  letters  is,  I 


INTRODUCTION 

think,  adequately  expressed  in  the  phrase  "Ca/rry 
On,"  which  I  have  used  as  the  title  of  this  book. 
It  was  our  happy  lot  to  meet  Coningsby  in  Lon- 
don in  the  January  of  the  present  year,  when  he 
was  granted  ten  days'  leave.  In  the  course  of 
conversation  one  night  he  laid  emphasis  on  the 
fact  that  he,  and  those  who  served  with  him, 
were,  after  all,  not  professional  soldiers,  but 
civilians  at  war.  They  did  not  love  war,  and 
when  the  war  was  ended  not  five  per  cent  of  them 
would  remain  in  the  army.  They  were  men 
who  had  left  professions  and  vocations  which 
still  engaged  the  best  parts  of  their  minds,  and 
would  return  to  them  when  the  hour  came.  War 
was  for  them  an  occupation,  not  a  vocation.  Yet 
they  had  proved  themselves,  one  and  all,  splen- 
did soldiers,  bearing  the  greatest  hardships  with- 
out complaint,  and  facing  wounds  and  death  with 
a  gay  courage  which  had  made  the  Canadian 
forces  famous  even  among  a  host  of  men,  equally 
brave  and  heroic.  The  secret  of  their  fortitude 
lay  in  the  one  brief  phrase,  "Carry  On."  Their 
fortitude  was  of  the  spirit  rather  than  the  nerves. 
They  were  aware  of  the  solemn  ideals  of  justice, 
liberty,  and  righteousness  for  which  they  fought, 
and  would  never  give  up  till  they  were  won.  In 
the  completeness  of  their  surrender  to  a  great 
cause  they  had  been  lifted  out  of  themselves  to 


INTRODUCTION  15 

a  new  plane  of  living  by  the  transformation  of 
their  spirit.  It  was  the  dogged  indomitable  drive 
of  spiritual  forces  controlling  bodily  forces.  Liv- 
ing or  dying  those  forces  would  prevail.  They 
would  carry  on  to  the  end,  however  long  the  war, 
and  would  count  no  sacrifice  too  great  to  assure 
its  triumph. 

This  is  the  spirit  which  breathes  through  these 
letters.  The  splendour  of  war,  as  my  son  puts 
it,  is  in  nothing  external ;  it  is  all  in  the  souls  of 
the  men.  "There's  a  marvellous  grandeur  about 
all  this  carnage  and  desolation — men's  souls  rise 
above  the  distress — they  have  to,  in  order  to  sur- 
vive." "Every  man  I  have  met  out  here  has  the 
amazing  guts  to  wear  his  crown  of  thorns  as 
though  it  were  a  cap-and-bells."  They  have 
shredded  off  their  weaknesses,  and  attained  that 
"corporate  stout-heartedness"  which  is  "the  acme 
of  what  Aristotle  meant  by  virtue."  For  himself, 
he  discovers  that  the  plague  of  his  former  modes 
of  life  lay  in  self-distrust.  It  was  the  disease  of 
the  age.  The  doubt  of  many  things  which  it  were 
wisdom  to  believe  had  ended  in  the  doubt  of  one's 
own  capacity  for  heroism.  All  those  doubts  and 
self-despisings  had  vanished  in  the  supreme  sur- 
render to  sacrificial  duty.  The  doors  of  the 
Kingdom  of  Heroism  were  flung  so  wide  that  the 
meanest   might   enter   in,    and   in   that   act   the 


i6  INTRODUCTION 

hiimblest  became  comrades  of  Drake's  men,  who 
could  jest  as  they  died.  No  one  knows  his  real 
strength  till  it  is  put  to  the  test;  the  highest  joy 
of  life  is  to  discover  that  the  soul  can  meet  the 
test,  and  survive  it. 

The  Somme  battlefield,  from  which  all  these 
letters  were  despatched,  is  an  Inferno  much  more 
terrible  than  any  Dante  pictured.  It  is  a  vast 
sea  of  mud,  full  of  the  unburied  dead,  pitted  and 
pock-marked  by  shell-holes,  treeless  and  house- 
less, "the  abomination  of  desolation."  And  the 
men  who  toil  across  it  look  more  like  outcasts 
of  the  London  Embankment  than  soldiers. 
"They're  loaded  down  like  pack-animals,  their 
shoulders  are  rounded,  they're  wearied  to  death, 
but  they  go  on  and  go  on.  .  .  .  There's  no  flash 
of  sword  or  splendour  of  uniforms.  They're  only 
very  tired  men  determined  to  carry  on.  The  war 
will  be  won  by  tired  men  who  can  never  again 
pass  an  insurance  test."  Yet  they  carry  on — the 
"broken  counter-jumper,  the  ragged  ex-plumber," 
the  clerk  from  the  office,  the  man  from  the  farm ; 
Londoner,  Canadian,  Australian,  New  Zealander, 
men  drawn  from  every  quarter  of  the  Empire, 
who  daily  justify  their  manhood  by  devotion  to 
an  ideal  and  by  contempt  of  death.  And  in  the 
heart  of  each  there  is  a  settled  conviction 
that  the  cause  for  which  they  have  sacrificed  so 


INTRODUCTION  17 

much  must  triumph.  They  have  no  illusions 
about  an  early  peace.  They  see  their  comrades 
fall,  and  say  quietly,  "He's  gone  West."  They  do 
heroic  things  daily,  which  in  a  lesser  war  would 
have  won  the  Victoria  Cross,  but  in  this  war  are 
commonplaces.  They  know  themselves  re-bom 
in  soul,  and  are  dimly  aware  that  the  world  is 
travailing  toward  new  birth  with  them.  They, 
are  still  very  human,  men  who  end  their  letters 
with  a  row  of  crosses  which  stand  for  kisses. 
They  are  not  dehumanised  by  war ;  the  kindliness 
and  tenderness  of  their  natures  are  unspoiled  by 
all  their  daily  traffic  in  horror.  But  they  have 
won  their  souls;  and  when  the  days  of  peace  re- 
turn these  men  will  take  with  them  to  the 
civilian  life  a  tonic  strength  and  nobleness  which 
will  arrest  and  extirpate  the  decadence  of  society 
with  the  saving  salt  of  valour  and  of  faith. 

It  may  be  said  also  that  they  do  not  hate  their 
foe,  although  they  hate  the  things  for  which  he 
fights.  They  are  fighting  a  clean  fight,  with  men 
whose  courage  they  respect.  A  German  prisoner 
who  comes  into  the  British  camp  is  sure  of  good 
treatment.  He  is  neither  starved  nor  insulted. 
His  captors  share  with  him  cheerfully  their  ra- 
tions and  their  little  luxuries.  Sometimes  a  sul- 
len brute  will  spit  in  the  face  of  his  captor  when 
he  offers  him  a  cigarette;  he  is  always  an  officer, 


i8  INTRODUCTION 

never  a  private.  And  occasionally  between  these 
fighting  hosts  there  are  acts  of  magnanimity 
which  stand  out  illumined  against  the  dark  back- 
ground of  death  and  suffering.  One  of  the 
stories  told  me  by  my  son  illustrates  this.  Dur- 
ing one  fierce  engagement  a  British  officer  saw  a 
German  officer  impaled  on  the  barbed  wire, 
writhing  in  anguish.  The  fire  was  dreadful,  yet 
he  still  hung  there  unscathed.  At  length  the 
British  officer  could  stand  it  no  longer.  He  said 
quietly,  "I  can't  bear  to  look  at  that  poor  chap 
any  longer."  So  he  went  out  under  the  hail  of 
shell,  released  him,  took  him  on  his  shoulders  and 
carried  him  to  the  German  trench.  The  firing 
ceased.  Both  sides  watched  the  act  with  wonder. 
Then  the  Commander  in  the  German  trench  came 
forward,  took  from  his  own  bosom  the  Iron 
Cross,  and  pinned  it  on  the  breast  of  the  British 
officer.  Such  an  episode  is  true  to  the  holiest 
ideals  of  chivalry ;  and  it  is  all  the  more  welcome 
because  the  German  record  is  stained  by  so  many 
acts  of  barbarism,  which  the  world  cannot  for- 
give. 

This  magnanimous  attitude  toward  the  enemy 
is  very  apparent  in  these  letters.  The  man 
whose  mind  is  filled  with  great  ideals  of  sacrifice 
and  duty  has  no  room  for  the  narrowness  of 
hate.     He  can  pity  a  foe  whose  sufferings  ex- 


INTRODUCTION  19 

ceed  his  own,  and  the  more  so  because  he  knows 
that  his  foe  is  doomed.  The  British  troops  do 
know  this  to-day  by  many  infalHble  signs.  In 
the  early  days  of  the  war  untrained  men,  poorly 
equipped  with  guns,  were  pitted  against  the  best 
trained  troops  in  Europe.  The  first  Canadian 
armies  were  sacrificed,  as  was  that  immortal 
army  of  Imperial  troops  who  saved  the  day  at 
Mons.  The  Canadians  often  perished  in  that 
early  fighting  by  the  excess  of  their  own  reck- 
less bravery.  They  are  still  the  most  daring 
fighters  in  the  British  army,  but  they  have 
profited  by  the  hard  discipline  of  the  past.  They 
know  now  that  they  have  not  only  the  will  to 
conquer,  but  the  means  of  conquest.  Their  ar- 
tillery has  become  conspicuous  for  its  efficiency. 
It  is  the  ceaseless  artillery  fire  which  has  turned 
the  issue  of  the  war  for  the  British  forces.  The 
work  of  the  infantry  is  beyond  praise.  They  "go 
over  the  top"  with  superb  courage,  and  all  who 
have  seen  them  are  ready  to  say  with  my  son, 
"I'm  hats  off  to  the  infantry."  And  in  this  final 
efficiency,  surpassing  all  that  could  have  been 
thought  possible  in  the  earlier  stages  of  the  war, 
the  British  forces  read  the  clear  augury  of  vic- 
tory. The  war  will  be  won  by  the  Allied  armies ; 
not  only  because  they  fight  for  the  better  cause, 
which  counts  for  much,  in  spite  of  Napoleon's 


20  INTRODUCTION 

cynical  saying  that  "God  is  on  the  side  of  the 
strongest  battahons" ;  but  because  at  last  they 
have  superiority  in  equipment,  discipline  and  effi- 
ciency. Upon  that  shell-torn  Western  front, 
amid  the  mud  and  carnage  of  the  Somme,  there 
has  been  slowly  forged  the  weapon  which  will 
drive  the  Teuton  enemy  across  the  Rhine,  and 
give  back  to  Europe  and  the  world  unhindered 
liberty  and  enduring  peace. 

W.  J.  Dawson. 
March,  191 7. 


THE  LETTERS 

In  order  to  make  some  of  the  allusions  in  these 
letters  clear  I  will  set  down  briefly  the  circum- 
stances which  explain  them,  and  supply  a  narra- 
tive link  where  it  may  be  required, 

I  have  already  mentioned  the  Military  Camp 
at  Petewawa,  on  the  Ottawa  river.  The  Camp 
is  situated  about  seven  miles  from  Pembroke. 
The  Ottawa  river  is  at  this  point  a  beautiful 
lake.  Immediately  opposite  the  Camp  is  a  little 
summer  hotel  of  the  simplest  description.  It 
was  at  this  hotel  that  my  wife,  my  daughter,  and 
myself  stayed  in  the  early  days  of  July,  191 6. 

The  hotel  was  full  of  the  wives  of  the  officers 
stationed  in  the  Camp.  During  the  daytime  I 
was  the  only  man  among  the  guests.  About  five 
o'clock  in  the  afternoon  the  officers  from  the 
Camp  began  to  arrive  on  a  primitive  motor  ferry- 
boat. My  son  came  over  each  day,  and  we  often 
visited  him  at  the  Camp.  His  long  training  at 
Kingston  had  been  very  severe.  It  included  be- 
sides the  various  classes  which  he  attended  a  great 
deal  of  hard  exercise,  long  rides  or  foot  marches 
over  frozen  roads  before  breakfast,  and  so  forth. 


22  THE  LETTERS 

After  this  strenuous  winter  the  Camp  at  Pete- 
wawa  was  a  dehghtful  change.  His  tent  stood 
on  a  bluff,  commanding  an  exquisite  view  of  the 
broad  stretch  of  water,  diversified  by  many  small 
islands.  We  had  a  great  deal  of  swimming  in 
the  lake,  and  several  motor-boat  excursions  to 
its  beautiful  upper  reaches.  One  afternoon 
when  we  went  over  in  our  launch  to  meet  him 
at  the  Camp  wharf,  he  told  us  that  that  day  a 
General  had  come  from  Ottawa  to  ask  for 
twenty-five  picked  officers  to  supply  the  casu- 
alties among  the  Canadian  Field  Artillery  at  the 
front.  He  had  immediately  volunteered  and 
been  accepted. 

At  this  time  my  two  younger  sons,  who  had 
joined  us  at  Petewawa  in  order  to  see  their 
brother,  enrolled  themselves  in  the  Royal  Naval 
Motor  Patrol  Service,  and  had  to  return  to  Nel- 
son, British  Columbia,  to  settle  their  affairs. 
Near  Nelson,  on  the  Kootenay  Lake,  we  have  a 
large  fruit  ranch,  managed  by  my  second  son, 
Reginald.  My  youngest  son,  Eric,  was  with  a 
law-firm  in  Nelson,  and  had  just  passed  his  final 
examinations  as  solicitor  and  barrister. 

This  ranch  had  played  a  great  part  in  our 
lives.  The  scenery  is  among  the  finest  in  Brit- 
ish Columbia.  We  usually  spent  our  summers 
there,  finding  not  only  continual  interest  in  the 


THE  LETTERS  23 

development  of  our  orchards,  but  a  great  deal  of 
pleasure  in  riding,  swimming,  and  boating.  We 
had  often  talked  of  building  a  modem  house 
there,  but  had  never  done  so.  The  original  "lit- 
tle shack"  was  the  work  of  Reginald's  own 
hands,  in  the  days  when  most  of  the  ranch  was 
primeval  forest.  It  had  been  added  to,  but  was 
still  of  the  simplest  description.  One  reason 
why  we  had  not  built  a  modern  house  was  that 
this  "little  shack"  had  become  much  endeared  to 
us  by  association  and  memory.  We  were  all  to- 
gether there  more  than  once,  and  Coningsby 
had  written  a  great  deal  there.  We  built  later 
on  a  sort  of  summer  library — a  big  room  on  the 
edge  of  a  beautiful  ravine — to  which  reference 
is  made  in  later  letters.  Some  of  the  happiest 
days  of  our  lives  were  spent  in  these  lovely  sur- 
roundings, and  the  memory  of  those  blue  sum- 
mer days,  amid  the  fragrance  of  miles  of  pine- 
forest,  often  recurs  to  Coningsby  as  he  writes 
from  the  mud-wastes  of  the  Somme. 

We  left  Petewawa  to  go  to  the  ranch  before 
Coningsby  sailed  for  England,  that  we  might 
get  our  other  two  sons  ready  for  their  journey 
to  England.  They  left  us  on  August  21st,  and 
the  ranch  was  sub-let  to  Chinamen  in  the  end 
of  September,  when  we  returned  to  Newark, 
New  Jersey. 


CARRY  ON 


Ottawa,  July  i6th,  1916. 

Dearest  All: 

So  much  has  happened  since  last  I  saw  you 
that  it's  difficult  to  know  where  to  start.  On 
Thursday,  after  lunch,  I  got  the  news  that  we 
were  to  entrain  from  Petewawa  next  Friday 
morning.  I  at  once  put  in  for  leave  to  go  to 
Ottawa  the  next  day  until  the  following  Thurs- 
day at  reveille.  We  came  here  with  a  lot  of  the 
other  officers  who  are  going  over  and  have  been 
having  a  very  full  time. 

I  am  sailing  from  a  port  unknown  on  board 
the  Olympic  with  6,000  troops — there  is  to  be  a 
big  convoy.  I  feel  more  than  ever  I  did — and 
I'm  sure  it's  a  feeling  that  you  share  since  visit- 
ing the  camp — that  I  am  setting  out  on  a  Cru- 
sade from  which  it  would  have  been  impossible 
to  withhold  myself  with  honour.  I  go  quite 
gladly  and  contentedly,  and  pray  that  in  God's 
good  time  we  may  all  sit  again  in  the  little  shack 
at  Kootenay  and  listen  to  the  rustling  of  the  or- 

25 


26  CARRY  ON 

chard  outside.  It  will  be  of  those  summer  days 
that  I  shall  be  thinking  all  the  time. 

Yours,  with  very  much  love, 

Con. 

II 

Halifax,  July  23rd. 

My  Dear  Ones  : 

We've  spent  all  morning  on  the  dock,  see- 
ing to  our  baggage,  and  have  just  got  leave 
ashore  for  two  hours.  We  have  had  letters 
handed  to  us  saying  that  on  no  account  are  we 
to  mention  anything  concerning  our  passage  over- 
seas, neither  are  we  allowed  to  cable  our  arrival 
from  the  other  side  until  four  clear  days  have 
elapsed. 

You  are  thinking  of  me  this  quiet  Sunday 
morning  at  the  ranch,  and  I  of  you.  And  I  am 
wishing As  I  wish,  I  stop  and  ask  my- 
self, "Would  I  be  there  if  I  could  have  my 
choice?"  And  I  remember  those  lines  of  Emer- 
son's which  you  quoted : 

"Though  love  repine  and  reason  chafe, 
There  comes  a  voice  without  reply, 
'Twere  man's  perdition  to  be  safe, 
When  for  the  Truth  he  ought  to  die." 

I  wouldn't  turn  back  if  I  could,  but  my  heart 
cries  out  against  "the  voice  which  speaks  with- 
out reply." 


CARRY  ON  27 

Things  are  growing  deeper  with  me  in  all  sorts 
of  ways.  Family  affections  stand  out  so  de- 
sirably and  vivid,  like  meadows  green  after  rain. 
And  religion  means  more.  The  love  of  a  few 
dear  human  people  and  the  love  of  the  divine 
people  out  of  sight,  are  all  that  one  has  to  lean 
on  in  the  graver  hours  of  life.  I  hope  I  come 
back  again — I  very  much  hope  I  come  back 
again ;  there  are  so  many  finer  things  that  I  could 
do  with  the  rest  of  my  days — bigger  things.  But 
if  by  any  chance  I  should  cross  the  seas  to  stay, 
you'll  know  that  that  also  will  be  right  and  as  big 
as  anything  that  I  could  do  with  life,  and  some- 
thing that  you'll  be  able  to  be  just  as  proud 
about  as  if  I  had  lived  to  fulfil  all  your  other 
dear  hopes  for  me,  I  don't  suppose  I  shall  talk 
of  this  again.  But  I  wanted  you  to  know  that 
underneath  all  the  lightness  and  ambition  there's 
something  that  I  learnt  years  ago  in  Highbury.  * 
I've  become  a  little  child  again  in  God's  hands, 
with  full  confidence  in  His  love  and  wisdom,  and 
a  growing  trust  that  whatever  He  decides  for  me 
will  be  best  and  kindest. 

This  is  the  last  letter  I  shall  be  able  to  send 
to  you  before  the  other  boys  follow  me.     Keep 

*We  resided  over  thirteen  years  at  Highbury,  London, 
N.,  during  my  pastorate  of  the  Highbury  Quadrant  Con- 
gregational Church. 


25  CARRY  ON 

brave,  dear  ones,  for  all  our  sakes;  don't  let  any 
of  us  turn  cowards  whatever  ultimately  hap- 
pens. We've  a  tradition  to  live  up  to  now  that 
we  have  become  a  family  of  soldiers  and  sailors. 

I  shall  long  for  the  time  when  you  come  over 
to  England.  Where  will  our  meeting  be  and 
when  ?  Perhaps  the  war  may  be  ended  and  then 
won't  you  be  glad  that  we  dared  all  this  sorrow 
of  good-byes? 

God  bless  and  keep  you, 


III 


Con. 


On  Board, 

July  27th,  1916. 


My  Very  Dear  People: 

Here  we  are  scooting  along  across  the 
same  old  Atlantic  we've  crossed  so  many  times 
on  journeys  of  pleasure.  I'm  at  a  loss  to  make 
my  letters  interesting,  as  we  are  allowed  to  say 
little  concerning  the  voyage  and  everything  is 
censored. 

There  are  men  on  board  who  are  going  back 
to  the  trenches  for  the  second  time.  One  of 
them  is  a  captain  in  the  Princess  Pat's,  who  is 
badly  scarred  in  his  neck  and  cheek  and  thighs, 
and  has  been  in  Canada  recuperating.  There  is 
also  a  young  flying  chap  who  has  also  seen  ser- 


CARRY  ON  29 

vice.  They  are  all  such  boys  and  so  plucky  in 
the  face  of  certain  knowledge. 

This  morning  I  woke  up  thinking  of  our  mo- 
tor-tour of  two  years  ago  in  England,  and  es- 
pecially of  our  first  evening  at  The  Three  Cups 
in  Dorset.  I  feel  like  running  down  there  to 
see  it  all  again  if  I  get  any  leave  on  landing. 
How  strange  it  will  be  to  go  back  to  Highbury 
again  like  this!  The  little  boy  who  ran  back 
and  forth  to  school  down  Paradise  Row  lit- 
tle thought  of  the  person  who  to-day  masquer- 
ades as  his  elder  self. 

Heigho!  I  wish  I  could  tell  you  a  lot  of 
things  that  I'm  not  allowed  to.  This  letter 
would  be  much  more  interesting  then. 

In  seventeen  days  the  boys  will  also  have  left 
you — so  this  will  arrive  when  you're  horribly 
lonely.  I'm  so  sorry  for  you  dear  people — ^but 
I'd  be  sorrier  for  you  if  we  were  all  with  you. 
If  I  were  a  father  or  mother,  I'd  rather  have 
my  sons  dead  than  see  them  failing  when  the 
supreme  sacrifice  was  called  for.  I  marvel  all 
the  time  at  the  prosaic  and  even  coarse  types  of 
men  who  have  risen  to  the  greatness  of  the  oc- 
casion. And  there's  not  a  man  aboard  who 
would  have  chosen  the  job  ahead  of  him.  One 
man  here  used  to  pay  other  people  to  kill  his 
pigs  because  he  couldn't  endure  the  cruelty  of 


30  CARRY  ON 

doing  it  himself.  And  now  he's  going  to  kill 
men.  And  he's  a  sample.  I  wonder  if  there  is 
a  Lord  God  of  Battles — or  is  he  only  an  inven- 
tion of  man  and  an  excuse  for  man's  own  ac- 
tions. 

Monday. 
We  are  just   in — safely   arrived   in   spite   of 
everything.     I  hope  you  had  no  scare  reports  of 
our  having  been  sunk — such  reports  often  get 
about  when  a  big  troop  ship  is  on  the  way. 

I'm  baggage  master  for  my  draft,  and  have  to 
get  on  deck  now.  You'll  have  a  long  letter  from 
me  soon. 

Good-bye, 

Yours  ever, 

Con. 

IV 

Shorncliff,  August  19th,  1916. 

My  Dearests  : 

We  haven't  had  any  hint  of  what  is  going 
to  happen  to  us — whether  Field  Artillery,  the 
Heavies  or  trench  mortars.  There  seems  little 
doubt  that  we  are  to  be  in  England  for  a  little 
while  taking  special  courses. 

I  read  father's  letter  yesterday.  You  are  very 
brave — you  never  thought  that  you  would  be  the 
father  of  a  soldier  and  sailors;  and,  as  you  say, 


CARRY  ON  31 

there's  a  kind  of  tradition  about  the  way  in 
which  the  fathers  of  soldiers  and  sailors  should 
act.  Confess — aren't  you  more  honestly  happy 
to  be  our  father  as  we  are  now  than  as  we  were  ? 
I  know  quite  well  you  are,  in  spite  of  the  loneli- 
ness and  heartache.  We've  all  been  forced  into 
a  heroism  of  which  we  did  not  think  ourselves 
capable.  We've  been  carried  up  to  the  Calvary 
of  the  world  where  it  is  expedient  that  a  few 
men  should  suffer  that  all  the  generations  to 
come  may  be  better. 

I  understand  in  a  dim  way  all  that  you  suffer 
— the  sudden  divorce  of  all  that  we  had  hoped 
for  from  the  present — the  ceaseless  questionings 
as  to  what  lies  ahead.  Your  end  of  the  business 
is  the  worse.  For  me,  I  can  go  forward  steadily 
because  of  the  greatness  of  the  glory.  I  never 
thought  to  have  the  chance  to  suffer  in  my  body 
for  other  men.  The  insufficiency  of  merely  set- 
ting nobilities  vlown  on  paper  is  finished.  How 
unreal  I  seem  to  myself!  Can  it  be  true  that  I 
am  here  and  you  are  in  the  still  aloofness  of  the 
Rockies?  I  think  the  multitude  of  my  changes 
has  blunted  my  perceptions.  I  trudge  along  like 
a  traveller  between  high  hedgerows ;  my  heart  is 
blinkered  so  that  I  am  scarcely  aware  of  land- 
scapes. My  thoughts  are  always  with  you — I 
make  calculations  for  the  differences  of  time  that 


32  CARRY  ON 

I  may  follow  more  accurately  your  doings.  I'd 
love  to  come  down  to  the  study  summer-house 
and  watch  the  blueness  of  the  lake  with  you — ■ 
I  love  those  scenes  and  memories  more  than  any 
in  the  world. 

Good-bye  for  the  present.    Be  brave. 
Yours, 

Con. 


Shorncuff,  August  19th,  1916. 

My  Dears: 

It's  not  quite  three  weeks  to-day  since  I 
came  to  England,  and  it  seems  ages.  The  first 
week  was  spent  on  leave,  the  second  I  passed  my 
exams  in  gun  drill  and  gun-laying,  and  this  week 
I  have  finished  my  riding.  Next  Monday  I  start 
on  my  gunnery. 

Do  you  remember  Captain  S.  at  the  Camp? 
I  had  his  young  brother  to  dinner  with  me  last 
night — he's  just  back  from  France  minus  an 
eye.  He  lasted  three  and  a  half  weeks,  and  was 
buried  four  feet  deep  by  a  shell.  He's  a  jolly 
boy,  as  cheerful  as  you  could  want  and  is  very 
good  company.  He  gave  me  a  vivid  description. 
He  had  a  great  boy-friend.  At  the  start  of  the 
war  they  both  joined,   S.  in  the  Artillery,  his 


CARRY  ON  33 

friend  in  the  Mounted  Rifles.  At  parting  they 
exchanged  identification  tokens.  S.'s  bore  his 
initials  and  the  one  word  "Violets" — which 
meant  that  they  were  his  favourite  flower  and  he 
would  like  to  have  some  scattered  over  him  when 
he  was  buried.  His  friend  wore  his  initials  and 
the  words  "No  flowers  by  request."  It  was  S.'s 
first  week  out — they  were  advancing,  having 
driven  back  the  enemy,  and  were  taking  up  a 
covered  position  in  a  wood  from  which  to  renew 
their  offensive.  It  was  night,  black  as  pitch,  but 
they  knew  that  the  wood  must  have  been  the 
scene  of  fighting  by  the  scuttling  of  the  rats. 
Suddenly  the  moon  came  out,  and  from  beneath 
a  bush  S.  saw  a  face — or  rather  half  a  face — 
which  he  thought  he  recognised,  gazing  up  at 
him.  He  corrects  himself  when  he  tells  the 
story,  and  says  that  it  wasn't  so  much  the  dis- 
figured features  as  the  profile  that  struck  him  as 
familiar.  He  bent  down  and  searched  beneath 
the  shirt,  and  drew  out  a  little  metal  disc  with 
"No  flowers  by  request"  written  on  it. 

I  don't  know  whether  I  ought  to  repeat  things 
like  that  to  you,  but  the  description  was  so 
graphic,  I  have  met  many  who  have  returned 
from  the  Front,  and  what  puzzles  me  in  all  of 
them  is  their  unawed  acceptance  of  death.  I 
don't  think  I  could  ever  accept  it  as  natural ;  it's 


34  CARRY  ON 

too    discourteous    in    its    interruption    of   many 
dreams  and  plans  and  loves. 

Yours  with  very  much  love, 

Con. 

VI 

Shorncliff,  August  30th,  1916. 

My  Dearests: 

I  have  just  returned  from  sending  you  a 
cable  to  let  you  know  that  I'm  off  to  France. 
The  word  came  out  in  orders  yesterday,  and  I 
shall  leave  before  the  end  of  the  week  with  a 
draft  of  officers — I  have  been  in  England  just  a 
day  over  four  weeks.  My  only  regret  is  that  I 
shall  miss  the  boys  who  should  be  travelling  up 
to  London  about  the  same  time  as  I  am  setting 
out  for  the  Front.  After  I  have  been  there  for 
three  months  I  am  supposed  to  get  a  leave — this 
should  be  due  to  me  about  the  beginning  of  De- 
cember, and  you  can  judge  how  I  shall  count  on 
it.  Think  of  the  meeting  with  R.  and  E.,  and 
the  immensity  of  the  joy. 

Selfishly  I  wish  that  you  were  here  at  this 
moment — actually  I'm  glad  that  you  are  away. 
Everybody  goes  out  quite  unemotionally  and 
with  very  few  good-byes — we  made  far  more 
fuss  in  the  old  days  about  a  week-end  visit. 

Now  that  at  last  it  has  come — this  privileged 


CARRY  ON  35 

moment  for  which  I  have  worked  and  waited — 
my  heart  is  very  quiet.  It's  the  test  of  a  char- 
acter which  I  have  often  doubted.  I  shall  be 
glad  not  to  have  to  doubt  it  again.  Whatever 
happens,  I  know  you  will  be  glad  to  remember 
that  at  a  great  crisis  I  tried  to  play  the  man,  how- 
ever small  my  qualifications.  We  have  always 
lived  so  near  to  one  another's  affections  that  this 
going  out  alone  is  more  lonely  to  me  than  to 
most  men.  I  have  always  had  some  one  near  at 
hand  with  love-blinded  eyes  to  see  my  faults  as 
springing  from  higher  motives.  Now  I  reach 
out  my  hands  across  six  thousand  miles  and  only 
touch  yours  with  my  imagination  to  say  good- 
bye. What  queer  sights  these  eyes,  which  have 
been  almost  your  eyes,  will  witness !  If  my  hands 
do  anything  respectable,  remember  that  it  is  your 
hands  that  are  doing  it.  It  is  your  influence  as 
a  family  that  has  made  me  ready  for  the  part  I 
have  to  play,  and  where  I  go,  you  follow  me. 

Poor  little  circle  of  three  loving  persons, 
please  be  tremendously  brave.  Don't  let  any- 
thing turn  you  into  cowards — we've  all  got  to 
be  worthy  of  each  other's  sacrifice;  the  greater 
the  sacrifice  may  prove  to  be  for  the  one  the 
greater  the  nobility  demanded  of  the  remainder. 
How  idle  the  words  sound,  and  yet  they  will  take 
deep  meanings  when  time  has  given  them  graver 


36  CARRY  ON 

sanctions.  I  think  gallant  is  the  word  I've  been 
trying  to  find — we  must  be  gallant  English 
women  and  gentlemen. 

It's  been  raining  all  day  and  I  got  very  wet 
this  morning.  Don't  you  wish  I  had  caught  some 
quite  harmless  sickness?  When  I  didn't  want  to 
go  back  to  school,  I  used  to  wet  my  socks  pur- 
posely in  order  to  catch  cold,  but  the  cold  always 
avoided  me  when  I  wanted  it  badly.  How  far 
away  the  childish  past  seems — almost  as  though 
it  never  happened.  And  was  I  really  the  bud- 
ding novelist  in  New  York?  Life  has  become 
so  stern  and  scarlet — and  so  brave.  From  my 
window  I  look  out  on  the  English  Channel,  a 
cold,  grey-green  sea,  with  rain  driving  across  it 
and  a  fleet  of  small  craft  taking  shelter.  Over 
there  beyond  the  curtain  of  mist  lies  France — 
and  everything  that  awaits  me. 

News  has  just  come  that  I  have  to  start.  Will 
continue  from  France. 

Yours  ever  lovingly, 

Ccm. 

VII 

Friday,  September  ist,  1916,  il  a.m. 

Dearest  Father  and  Mother  : 

I  embark  at  12.30 — so  this  is  the  last  line 
before  I  reach  France.     I  expect  the  boys  are 


CARRY  ON  37 

now  within  sight  of  English  shores — I  wish  I 
could  have  had  an  hour  with  them. 

I'm  going  to  do  my  best  to  bring  you  honour 
— remember  that — I  shall  do  things  for  your 
sake  out  there,  living  up  to  the  standards  you 
have  taught  me. 

Yours  with  a  heart  full  of  love, 

Con. 

VIII 

France,  September  ist,  1916. 
Dearest  M.  : 

Here  I  am  in  France  with  the  same 
strange  smells  and  street  cries,  and  almost  the 
same  little  boys  bowling  hoops  over  the  very 
cobbly  cobble  stones.  I  had  afternoon  tea  at  a 
patisserie  and  ate  a  great  many  gateaux  for  the 
sake  of  old  times.  We  had  a  very  choppy  cross- 
ing, and  you  would  most  certainly  have  been 
sick  had  you  been  on  board.  It  seemed  to  me 
that  I  must  be  coming  on  one  of  those  romantic 
holidays  to  see  churches  and  dead  history — only 
the  khaki-clad  figures  reminded  me  that  I  was 
coming  to  see  history  in  the  making.  It's  a 
funny  world  that  batters  us  about  so.  It's  three 
years  since  I  was  in  France — the  last  time  was 
with  Arthur  in  Provence.  It's  five  years  since 
you  and  I  did  our  famous  trip  together. 


38  CARRY  ON 

I  wish  you  were  here — there  are  heaps  of  Eng- 
lish nurses  in  the  streets.  I  expect  to  sleep  in 
this  place  and  proceed  to  my  destination  to-mor- 
row. How  I  wish  I  could  send  you  a  really  de- 
scriptive letter!  If  I  did,  I  fear  you  would  not 
get  it — so  I  have  to  write  in  generalities.  None 
of  this  seems  real — it's  a  kind  of  wild  pretence 
from  which  I  shall  awake — and  when  I  tell  you 
my  dream  you'll  laugh  and  say,  "How  absurd 
of  you,  dreaming  that  you  were  a  soldier.  I 
must  say  you  look  like  it." 

Good-bye,  my  dearest  girl, 

God  bless  you. 

Con. 

IX 

September  8th,  1916. 
My  Dearest  Ones  : 

I'm  sending  this  to  meet  you  on  your  re- 
turn from  Kootenay.  I  left  England  on  Sep- 
tember 1st  and  had  a  night  at  my  point  of  dis- 
embarkation, and  then  set  off  on  a  wandering  ad- 
venture in  search  of  my  division.  I'm  sure 
you'll  understand  that  I  cannot  enter  into  any 
details — I  can  only  give  you  general  and  purely 
personal  impressions.  There  were  two  other 
officers  with  me,  both  from  Montreal.  We  had 
to  picnic  on  chocolate  and  wine  for  twenty- four 


CARRY  ON  39 

hours  through  our  lack  of  forethought  in  not  sup- 
plying ourselves  with  food  for  the  trip.  I  shaved 
the  first  morning  with  water  from  the  exhaust 
of  a  railroad  engine,  having  first  balanced  my 
mirror  on  the  step.  The  engineer  was  fascinated 
with  my  safety  razor.  There  were  Tommies 
from  the  trenches  in  another  train,  muddied  to 
the  eyes — who  showed  themselves  much  more  re- 
sourceful. They  cooked  themselves  quite  ad- 
mirable meals  as  they  squatted  on  the  rails,  over 
little  fires  on  which  they  perched  tomato  cans. 
Sunday  evening  we  saw  our  first  German  prison- 
ers— a  young  and  degenerate-looking  lot.  Sun- 
day evening  we  got  off  at  a  station  in  the  rain, 
and  shouldered  our  own  luggage.  Our  luggage, 
by  the  way,  consists  of  a  sleeping  bag,  in  which 
much  of  our  stuff  is  packed,  and  a  kit  sack — ■ 
for  an  immediate  change  and  toilet  articles  one 
carries  a  haversack  hung  across  the  shoulder. 
Well,  as  I  say,  we  alighted  and  coaxed  a  military 
wagon  to  come  to  our  rescue.  As  we  set  off 
through  a  drizzling  rain,  trudging  behind  the 
cart,  a  double  rainbow  shone,  which  I  took  for 
an  omen.  Presently  we  came  to  a  rest  camp, 
where  we  told  our  sad  story  of  empty  tummies, 
and  were  put  up  for  the  night.  A  Jock — all 
Highlanders  are  called  Jock — looked  after  us. 
Next  morning  we  started  out  afresh  in  a  motor 


40  CARRY  ON 

lorry  and  finished  at  a  Y.  M.  C.  A.  tent,  where 
we  stayed  two  nights.  On  Wednesday  we  met 
the  General  in  Command  of  our  Division,  who 
posted  me  to  the  battery,  which  is  said  to  be  the 
best  in  the  best  brigade  in  the  best  division — so 
you  may  see  I'm  in  luck.  I  found  the  battery 
just  having  come  out  of  action — we  expect  to  go 
back  again  in  a  day  or  two.  Major  B.  is  the 
O.  C. — a  fine  man.  The  lieutenant  who  shares 
my  tent  won  the  Military  Cross  at  Ypres  last 
Spring.  I'm  very  happy — which  will  make  you 
happy — and  longing  for  my  first  taste  of  real 
war. 

How  strangely  far  away  I  am  from  you — all 
the  experiences  so  unshared  and  different.  Long 
before  this  reaches  you  I  shall  have  been  in  ac- 
tion several  times.  This  time  three  years  ago 
my  streak  of  luck  came  to  me  and  I  was  pranc- 
ing round  New  York.  To-day  I  am  much  more 
genuinely  happy  in  mind,  for  I  feel,  as  I  never 
felt  when  I  was  only  writing,  that  I  am  doing 
something  difficult  which  has  no  element  of  self 
in  it.  If  I  come  back,  life  will  be  a  much  less 
restless  affair. 

This  letter!  I  can  imagine  it  being  delivered 
and  the  shout  from  whoever  takes  it  and  the 
comments.  I  make  the  contrast  in  my  mind — 
this  little  lean-to  spread  of  canvas  about  four 


CARRY  ON  41 

feet  high,  the  horse-lines,  guns,  sentries  going  up 
and  down — and  then  the  dear  home  and  the  well- 
loved  faces.  , 

Good-bye.    Don't  be  at  all  nervous. 
Yours  lovingly, 

Con. 

X 

September  12th,  Tuesday. 

Dearest  M.  : 

You  will  already  have  received  my  first 
letters  giving  you  my  address  over  here.  The 
wagon  has  just  come  up  to  our  position,  but  it  has 
brought  me  only  one  letter  since  I've  been  across. 
I'm  sitting  in  my  dug-out  with  shells  passing  over 
my  head  with  the  sound  of  ripping  linen.  I've 
already  had  the  novel  experience  of  firing  a  bat- 
tery, and  to-morrow  I  go  up  to  the  first  line 
trenches. 

It's  extraordinary  how  commonplace  war  be- 
comes to  a  man  who  is  thrust  among  others  who 
consider  it  commonplace.  Not  fifty  yards  away 
from  me  a  dead  German  lies  rotting  and  uncov- 
ered— I  daresay  he  was  buried  once  and  then 
blown  out  by  a  shell. 

Wednesday,  7  p.m. 

Your  letters  came  two  hours  ago — the  first  to 
reach  me  here — and  I  have  done  little  else  but 


42  CARRY  ON 

read  and  re-read  them.  How  they  bring  the  old 
ways  of  life  back  with  their  love  and  longing! 
Dear  mother's  tie  will  be  worn  to-morrow,  and 
it  will  be  ripping  to  feel  that  it  was  made  by  her 
hands.  Your  cross  has  not  arrived  yet,  dear. 
Your  mittens  will  be  jolly  for  the  winter.  I've 
heard  nothing  from  the  boys  yet. 

To-day  I  took  a  trip  into  No-Man's  Land — 
when  the  war  is  ended  I'll  be  able  to  tell  you  all 
about  it.  I  think  the  picture  is  photographed 
upon  my  memory  forever.  There's  so  much 
you  would  like  to  hear  and  so  little  I'm  allowed 
to  tell.  Ask  G.  M'C.  if  he  was  at  Princeton  with 
a  man  named  Price — an  instructor  there. 

You  ought  to  see  the  excitement  when  the 
water-cart  brings  us  our  mail  and  the  letters  are 
handed  out.  Some  of  the  gunners  have  evident- 
ly told  their  Canadian  girls  that  they  are  officers, 
and  so  they  are  addressed  on  their  letters  as 
lieutenants.  I  have  to  censor  some  of  their  re- 
plies, and  I  can  tell  you  they  are  as  often  funny 
as  pathetic.  The  ones  to  their  mothers  are  child- 
ish, too,  and  have  rows  of  kisses.  I  think  men 
are  always  kiddies  if  you  look  beneath  the  sur- 
face. The  snapshots  did  fill  me  with  a  wanting 
to  be  with  you  in  Kootenay.  But  that's  not 
where  you'll  receive  this.  There'll  probably  be 
a  fire  in  the  sitting-room  at  home,  and  a  strong 


CARRY  ON  43 

aroma  of  coffee  and  tobacco.  You'll  be  sitting 
in  a  low  chair  before  the  fire  and  your  fingers 
rubbing  the  hair  above  your  left  ear  as  you  read 
this  aloud.  I'd  like  to  walk  in  on  you  and  say, 
"No  more  need  for  letters  now."  Some  day 
soon,  I  pray  and  expect. 

Tell  dear  Papa  and  Mother  that  their  answers 
come  next.  What  a  lot  of  love  you  each  one 
manage  to  put  into  your  written  pages!  I'm 
afraid  if  I  let  myself  go  that  way  I  might  make 
you  unhappy. 

Since  writing  this  far  I  have  had  supper.  I'm 
now  sleeping  in  a  new  dug-out  and  get  a  shower 
of  mould  on  my  sleeping-kit  each  time  the  guns 
are  fired.  One  doesn't  mind  that  particularly, 
especially  when  you  know  that  the  earth  walls 
make  you  safe.  I  have  a  candle  in  an  old  petrol 
tin  and  dodge  the  shadows  as  I  write.  You 
know,  this  artillery  game  is  good  sport  and 
one  takes  everything  as  it  comes  with  a  joke. 
The  men  are  splendid — their  cheeriness  comes 
up  bubbling  whenever  the  occasion  calls  for  the 
dumps.  Certainly  there  are  fine  qualities  which 
war,  despite  its  unnaturalness,  develops.  I'm 
hats  off  to  every  infantry  private  I  meet  now- 
adays. 

God  bless  you  and  all  of  you. 

Yours  lovingly,  Con. 


44  CARRY  ON 

The  reference  in  the  previous  letter  to  a 
cross  is  to  a  little  bronze  cross  of  Francis  of 
Assisi. 

Many  years  ago  I  visited  Assisi,  and,  on  leav- 
ing, the  monks  gave  me  four  of  these  small 
bronze  crosses,  assuring  me  that  those  who  wore 
them  were  securely  defended  in  all  peril  by  the 
efficacious  prayers  of  St.  Francis. 

Just  before  Coningsby  left  Shomcliff  to  go  to 
France  he  wrote  to  us  and  asked  if  we  couldn't 
send  him  something  to  hang  round  his  neck  for 
luck.  We  fortunately  had  one  of  these  crosses 
of  St.  Francis  at  the  ranch,  and  his  sister — the 
M,  of  these  letters — sent  it  to  him.  It  arrived 
safely,  and  he  has  worn  it  ever  since. 


XI 

September  15th,  19x6. 

Dear  Father: 

Your  last  letter  to  me  was  written  on  a 
quiet  morning  in  August — in  the  summer  house 
at  Kootenay.  It  came  up  yesterday  evening  on  a 
water-cart  from  the  wagon-lines  to  a  scene  a 
little  in  contrast. 

It's  a  fortnight  to-day  since  I  left  England, 
and  already  I've  seen  action.  Things  move 
quickljr   in   this   game,   and   it   is   a  game — one 


CARRY  ON  45 

which  brings  out  both  the  best  and  the  worst 
qualities  in  a  man.  If  unconscious  heroism  is 
the  virtue  most  to  be  desired,  and  heroism  spiced 
with  a  strong  sense  of  humour  at  that,  then 
pretty  well  every  man  I  have  met  out  here  has 
the  amazing  guts  to  wear  his  crown  of  thorns  as 
though  it  were  a  cap-and-bells.  To  do  that  for 
the  sake  of  corporate  stout-heartedness  is,  I  think, 
the  acme  of  what  Aristotle  meant  by  virtue.  A 
strong  man,  or  a  good  man  or  a  brainless  man, 
can  walk  to  meet  pain  with  a  smile  on  his  moutli 
because  he  knows  that  he  is  strong  enough  to 
bear  it,  or  worthy  enough  to  defy  it,  or  because 
he  is  such  a  fool  that  he  has  no  imagination. 
But  these  chaps  are  neither  particularly  strong, 
good,  nor  brainless;  they're  more  like  children, 
utterly  casual  with  regard  to  trouble,  and  quite 
aware  that  it  is  useless  to  struggle  against  their 
elders.  So  they  have  the  merriest  of  times  while 
they  can,  and  when  the  governess,  Death,  sum- 
mons them  to  bed,  they  obey  her  with  unsur- 
prised quietness.  It  sends  the  mercury  of  one's 
optimism  rising  to  see  the  way  they  do  it.  I 
search  my  mind  to  find  the  bigness  of  motive 
which  supports  them,  but  it  forever  evades  me. 
These  lads  are  not  the  kind  who  philosophise 
about  life;  they're  the  sort,  many  of  them,  who 
would  ordinarily  wear  corduroys  and  smoke  a 


46  CARR\   ON 

cutty  pipe.  I  suppose  the  Christian  martyrs 
would  have  done  the  same  had  corduroys  been 
the  fashion  in  that  day,  and  if  a  Roman  Raleigh 
had  discovered  tobacco. 

I  wrote  this  about  midnight  and  didn't  get  any 
further,  as  I  was  up  till  six  carrying  on  and  fir- 
ing the  battery.  After  adding  another  page  or 
two  I  want  to  get  some  sleep,  as  I  shall  probably 
have  to  go  up  to  the  observation  station  to  watch 
the  effect  of  fire  to-night.  But  before  I  turn  in 
I  want  to  tell  you  that  I  had  the  most  gorgeous 
mail  from  everybody.  Now  that  I'm  in  touch 
with  you  all  again,  it's  almost  like  saying  "How- 
do?"  every  night  and  morning. 

I  daresay  you'll  wonder  how  it  feels  to  be  un- 
der shell-fire.  This  is  how  it  feels — you  don't 
realise  your  danger  until  you  come  to  think  about 
it  afterwards — at  the  time  it's  like  playing  cocoa- 
nut  shies  at  a  coon's  head — only  you're  the  coon's 
head.  You  take  too  much  interest  in  the  sport 
of  dodging  to  be  afraid.  You'll  hear  the  Tom- 
mies saying  if  one  bursts  nearly  on  them,  "Line, 
you  blighter,  line.  Five  minutes  more  left,"  just 
as  though  they  were  reprimanding  the  unseen 
Hun  battery  for  rotten  shooting. 

The  great  word  of  the  Tommies  here  is  "No 
bloody  bon" — a  strange  mixture  of  French  and 
English,  which  means  that  a  thing  is  no  good- 


CARRY  ON  4f 

If  it  pleases  them  it's  Jake — though  where  Jake 
comes  from  nobody  knows. 

Now  I  must  get  a  wink  or  two,  as  I  don't 
know  when  I  may  have  to  start  off. 
Ever  yours,  with  love. 

Con. 

XII 

September  19th,  1916. 
Dearest  Mother: 

I've  been  in  France  19  days,  and  it  hasn't 
taken  me  long  to  go  into  action.  Soon  I  shali 
be  quite  an  old  hand.  I'm  just  back  from  24 
hours  in  the  Observation  Post,  from  which  one 
watches  the  effect  of  fire.  I  understand  now  and 
forgive  the  one  phrase  which  the  French  chil- 
dren have  picked  up  from  our  Tommies  on  ac- 
count of  its  frequent  occurrence — "bl mud." 

I  never  knew  that  mud  could  be  so  thick  and 
treacly.  All  my  fear  that  I  might  be  afraid  un- 
der shell-fire  is  over — you  get  to  believe  that  if 
you're  going  to  be  hit  you're  going  to  be.  But 
David's  phrase  keeps  repeating  itself  in  my  mind, 
"Ten  thousand  shall  fall  at  thy  side,  etc.,  but  it 
shall  not  come  nigh  unto  thee."  It's  a  curious 
thing  that  the  men  who  are  most  afraid  are  those 
who  get  most  easily  struck.  A  friend  of  G.  M'C.'s 
■^'-  as  hit  the  other  day  within  thirty  yards  of  me— 


48  CARRY  ON 

he  was  a  Princeton  chap.  I  mentioned  him  in 
one  of  my  previous  letters.  Our  right  section 
commander  got  a  bHghty  two  days  ago  and  is 
probably  now  in  England.  He  went  off  on  a 
firing  battery  wagon,  grinning  all  over  his  face, 
saying  he  wouldn't  sell  that  bit  of  blood  and 
shrapnel  for  a  thousand  pounds.  I'm  wearing 
your  tie — it's  the  envy  of  the  battery.  All  the 
officers  wanted  me  to  give  them  the  name  of  my 
girl.  It  never  occurs  to  men  that  mothers  will 
do  things  like  that. 

Thank  the  powers  it  has  stopped  raining  and 
we'll  be  able  to  get  dry.  I  came  in  plastered 
from  head  to  foot  with  lying  in  the  rain  on  my 
tummy  and  peering  over  the  top  of  a  trench. 
Isn't  it  a  funny  change  from  comfortable  break- 
fasts, press  notices  and  a  blazing  fire? 

Do  you  want  any  German  souvenirs?  Just  at 
present  I  can  get  plenty.  I  have  a  splendid 
bayonet  and  a  belt  with  Kaiser  Bill's  arms  on 
it — but  you  can't  forward  these  things  from 
France.  The  Germans  swear  that  they're  not 
using  bayonets  with  saw-edges,  but  you  can  buy 
them  for  five  francs  from  the  Tommies — ones 
they've  taken  from  the  prisoners  or  else  picked 
up. 

You  needn't  be  nervous  about  me.  I'm  a 
great  little  dodger  of  whizz-bangs.     Besides  I 


CARRY  ON  40 

have  a  superstition  that  there's  something  in  the 
power  of  M.'s  cross  to  bless.  It  came  with  the 
mittens,  and  is  at  present  round  my  neck. 

You  know  what  it  sounds  like  when  they're 
shooting  coals  down  an  iron  run-way  into  a 
cellar — well,  imagine  a  thousand  of  them. 
That's  what  I'm  hearing  while  I  write. 

God  bless  you ;  I'm  very  happy. 
Yours  ever. 

Con. 

XIII 

September  19th,  1916. 

Dearest  Father  : 

I'm  writing  you  your  birthday  letter  early, 
as  I  don't  know  how  busy  I  may  be  in  the  next 
week,  nor  how  long  this  may  take  to  reach  you. 
You  know  how  much  love  I  send  you  and  how 
I  would  like  to  be  with  you.  D'you  remember 
the  birthday  three  years  ago  when  we  set  the 
victrola  going  outside  your  room  door?  Those 
were  my  high- jinks  days  when  very  many  things 
seemed  possible.  I'd  rather  be  the  person  I  am 
now  than  the  person  I  was  then.  Life  was 
selfish  though  glorious. 

Well,  I've  seen  my  first  modern  battlefield  and 
am  quite  disillusioned  about  the  splendour  of 
war.     The  splendour  is  all  in  the  souls  of  the 


50  CARRY  ON 

men  who  creep  through  the  squalor  like  ver- 
min— it's  in  nothing  external.  There  was  a  chap 
here  the  other  day  who  deserved  the  V,  C.  four 
times  over  by  running  back  through  the  Hun 
shell  fire  to  bring  news  that  the  infantry  wanted 
more  artillery  support.  I  was  observing  for  my 
brigade  in  the  forward  station  at  the  time.  How 
he  managed  to  live  through  the  ordeal  nobody 
knows.  But  men  laugh  while  they  do  these 
things.     It's  fine. 

A  modem  battlefield  is  the  abomination  of 
abominations.  Imagine  a  vast  stretch  of  dead 
country,  pitted  with  shell-holes  as  though  it  had 
been  mutilated  with  small-pox.  There's  not  a 
leaf  or  a  blade  of  grass  in  sight.  Every  house 
has  either  been  leveled  or  is  in  ruins.  No  bird 
sings.  Nothing  stirs.  The  only  live  sound  is 
at  night — the  scurry  of  rats.  You  enter  a  kind 
of  ditch,  called  a  trench;  it  leads  on  to  another 
and  another  in  an  unjoyful  maze.  From  the 
sides  feet  stick  out,  and  arms  and  faces — ^the 
dead  of  previous  encounters.  "One  of  our 
chaps,"  you  say  casually,  recognising  him  by  his 
boots  or  khaki,  or  "Poor  blighter — a  Hun!" 
One  can  afford  to  forget  enmity  in  the  presence 
of  the  dead.  It  is  horribly  difficult  sometimes 
to  distinguish  between  the  living  and  the  slaugh- 
tered— they  both  lie  so  silently  in  their  little  ken- 


CARRY  ON  51 

nels  in  the  earthen  bank.  You  push  on — espe- 
cially if  you  are  doing  observation  work,  till  you 
are  past  your  own  front  line  and  out  in  No 
Man's  Land.  You  have  to  crouch  and  move 
warily  now.  Zingt  A  bullet  from  a  German 
sniper.  You  laugh  and  whisper,  "A  near  one, 
that."  My  first  trip  to  the  trenches  was  up  to 
No  Man's  Land.  I  went  in  the  early  dawn  and 
came  to  a  Madame  Tussaud's  show  of  the  dead, 
frozen  into  immobility  in  the  most  extraordi- 
nary attitudes.  Some  of  them  were  part  way 
out  of  the  ground,  one  hand  pressed  to  the 
wound,  the  other  pointing,  the  head  sunken  and 
the  hair  plastered  over  the  forehead  by  repeated 
rains.  I  kept  on  wondering  what  my  compan- 
ions would  look  like  had  they  been  three  weeks 
dead.  My  imagination  became  ingeniously  and 
vividly  morbid.  When  I  had  to  step  over  them 
to  pass,  it  seemed  as  though  they  must  clutch  at 
my  trench  coat  and  ask  me  to  help.  Poor  lonely 
people,  so  brave  and  so  anonymous  in  their 
death !  Somewhere  there  is  a  woman  who  loved 
each  one  of  them  and  would  give  her  life  for  my 
opportunity  to  touch  the  poor  clay  that  had  been 
kind  to  her.  It's  like  walking  through  the  day 
of  resurrection  to  visit  No  Man's  Land.  Then 
the  Huns  see  you  and  the  shrapnel  begins  to 
fall — vou  crouch  like  a  dog  and  run  for  it. 


52  CARRY  ON 

One  gets  used  to  shell-fire  up  to  a  point,  but 
there's  not  a  man  who  doesn't  want  to  duck  when 
he  hears  one  coming.  The  worst  of  all  is  the 
whizz-bang,  because  it  doesn't  give  you  a 
chance — it  pounces  and  is  on  you  the  same  mo- 
ment that  it  bangs.  There's  so  much  I  wish  that 
I  could  tell  you.  I  can  only  say  this,  at  the  mo- 
ment we're  making  history. 

What  a  curious  birthday  letter!  I  think  of  all 
your  other  birthdays — the  ones  before  I  met 
these  silent  men  with  the  green  and  yellow  faces, 
and  the  blackened  lips  which  will  never  speak 
again.  What  happy  times  we  have  had  as  a 
family — what  happy  jaunts  when  you  took  me 
in  those  early  days,  dressed  in  a  sailor  suit,  when 
you  went  hunting  pictures.  Yet,  for  all  the 
damnability  of  what  I  now  witness,  I  was  never 
quieter  in  my  heart.  To  have  surrendered  to  an 
imperative  self-denial  brings  a  peace  which  self- 
seeking  never  brought. 

So  don't  let  this  birthday  be  less  gay  for  my 
absence.  It  ought  to  be  the  proudest  in  your 
life — proud  because  your  example  has  taught 
each  of  your  sons  to  do  the  difficult  things  which 
seem  right.  It  would  have  been  a  condemna- 
tion of  you  if  any  one  of  us  had  been  a  shirker. 

"I  want  to  buy  fine  things  for  you 
And  be  a  soldier  if  I  can." 


CARRY  ON  53 

The  lines  come  back  to  me  now.  You  read 
them  to  me  first  in  the  dark  little  study  from  a 
green  oblong  book.  You  little  thought  that  I 
would  be  a  soldier — even  now  I  can  hardly  real- 
ise the  fact.  It  seems  a  dream  from  which  I 
shall  wake  up.  Am  I  really  killing  men  day  by 
day?     Am  I  really  in  jeopardy  myself? 

Whatever  happens  I'm  not  afraid,  and  I'll  give 
you  reason  to  be  glad  of  me. 

Very  much  love, 

Con. 

The  poem  referred  to  in  this  letter  was  actu- 
ally written  for  Coningsby  when  he  was  between 
five  and  six  years  old.  The  dark  little  study 
which  he  describes  was  in  the  old  house  at  Wes- 
ley's Chapel,  in  the  City  Road,  London — and  it 
was  veiy  dark,  with  only  one  window,  looking 
out  upon  a  dingy  yard.  The  green  oblong  book 
in  which  I  used  to  write  my  poems  I  still  have; 
and  it  is  an  illustration  of  the  tenacity  of  a  child's 
memory  that  he  should  recall  it.  The  poem  was 
called  A  Little  Boy's  Programme,  and  ran  thus : 

I  am  so  very  young  and  small, 
That,  when  big  people  pass  me  by, 
I  sometimes  think  they  are  so  high 
I'll  never  be  a  man  at  all. 


54  CARRY  ON 

And  yet  I  want  to  be  a  man 
Because  so  much  I  want  to  do; 
I  want  to  buy  fine  things  for  you. 
And  be  a  soldier,  if  I  can. 


When  I'm  a  man  I  will  not  let 
Poor  little  children  starve,  or  be 
Ill-used,  or  stand  and  beg  of  me 
With  naked  feet  out  in  the  wet. 


Now,  don't  you  laugh ! — The  father  kissed 
The  little  serious  mouth  and  said 
"You've  almost  made  me  cry  instead. 
You  blessed  little  optimist." 


XIV 

September  2ist,  1916. 

My  Very  Dear  M.  : 

I  am  wearing  your  talisman  while  I  write 
and  have  a  strong  superstition  in  its  efficacy. 
The  efficacy  of  your  socks  is  also  very  notice- 
able— I  wore  them  the  first  time  on  a  trip  to  the 
Forward  Observation  Station.  I  had  to  lie  on 
my  tummy  in  the  mud,  my  nose  just  showing 
above  the  parapet,  for  the  best  part  of  twenty- 
four  hours.  Your  socks  little  thought  I  would 
take  them  into  such  horrid  places  when  you  made 
them. 

Last  night  both  the  King  and  Sir  Sam  sent  us 
congratulations — I  popped   in  just  at  the  right 


CARRY  ON  55 

time.  I  daresay  you  know  far  more  about  our 
doings  than  I  do.  Only  this  morning  I  picked 
up  the  London  Times  and  read  a  full  account  of 
everything  I  have  witnessed.  The  account  is 
likely  to  be  still  fuller  in  the  New  York  papers. 
"Home  for  Christmas" — that's  v/hat  the  Tom- 
mies are  promising  their  mothers  and  sweet- 
hearts in  all  their  letters  that  I  censor.  Yes- 
terday I  was  offered  an  Imperial  commission  in 
the  army  of  occupation.  But  home  for  Christ- 
mas, will  be  Christmas,  19 17 — I  can't  think  that 
it  will  be  earlier. 

Very  much  love. 

Con. 

XV 

Sunday,  September  24th,  1916. 
Dearest  Mother  : 

Your  locket  has  just  reached  me,  and  I 
have  strung  it  round  my  neck  with  M.'s  cross. 
Was  it  M.'s  cross  the  other  night  that  accounted 
for  my  luck?  I  was  in  a  gun-pit  when  a  shell 
landed,  killing  a  man  only  a  foot  away  from  me 
and  wounding  three  others — I  and  the  sergeant 
were  the  only  two  to  get  out  all  right.  Men 
who  have  been  out  here  some  time  have  a  dozen 
stories  of  similar  near  squeaks.  And  talking  of 
squeaks,  it  was  a  mouse  that  saved  one  man.     It 


56  CARRY  ON 

kept  him  awake  to  such  an  extent  that  he  deter- 
mined to  move  to  another  place.  Just  as  he  got 
outside  the  dug-out  a  shell  fell  on  the  roof. 

You'll  be  pleased  to  know  that  we  have  a  rip- 
ping chaplain  or  Padre,  as  they  call  chaplains, 
with  us.  He  plays  the  game,  and  I've  struck  up 
a  great  friendship  with  him.  We  discuss  litera- 
ture and  religion  when  we're  feeling  a  bit  fed 
up.  We  talk  at  home  of  our  faith  being  tested — 
one  begins  to  ask  strange  questions  here  when 
he  sees  what  men  are  allowed  by  the  Almighty 
to  do  to  one  another,  and  so  it's  a  fine  thing  to 
be  in  constant  touch  with  a  great-hearted  chap 
who  can  risk  his  life  daily  to  speak  of  the  life 
hereafter  to  dying  Tommies. 

I  wish  I  could  tell  you  of  my  doings,  but  it's 
strictly  against  orders.  You  may  read  in  the 
papers  of  actions  in  which  I've  taken  part  and 
never  know  that  I  was  there. 

We  live  for  the  most  part  on  tinned  stufif,  but 
our  appetites  make  anything  taste  palatable. 
Living  and  sleeping  in  the  open  air  keeps  one 
ravenous.  And  one  learns  to  sleep  the  sleep  of 
the  just  despite  the  roaring  of  the  guns. 

God  bless  you  each  one  and  give  us  peaceful 
hearts. 

Yours  ever, 

Con. 


CARRY  ON  57 

XVI 

September  28th,  1916. 

My  Dears: 

We're  in  the  midst  of  a  fine  old  show,  so 
I  don't  get  much  opportunity  for  writing.  Suf- 
fice it  to  say  that  I've  seen  the  big  side  of  war  by 
now  and  the  extraordinary  uncalculating  cour- 
age of  it.  Men  run  out  of  a  trench  to  an  at- 
tack with  as  much  eagerness  as  they  would  dis- 
play in  overtaking  a  late  bus.  If  you  want  to 
get  an  idea  of  what  meals  are  like  when  a  row 
is  on,  order  the  McAlpin  to  spread  you  a  table 
where  34th  crosses  Broadway — and  wait  for  the 
uptown  traffic  on  the  Elevated.  It's  wonderful 
to  see  the  waiters  dodging  with  dishes  through 
the  shell-holes. 

It's  a  wonderful  autumn  day,  golden  and  mel- 
low; I  picture  to  myself  what  this  country  must 
have  looked  like  before  the  desolation  of  war 
struck  it. 

I  was  Brigade  observation  officer  on  Septem- 
ber 26th,  and  wouldn't  have  missed  what  I  saw 
for  a  thousand  dollars.  It  was  a  touch  and  go 
business,  with  shells  falling  everywhere  and  ma- 
chine-gun fire — but  something  glorious  to  re- 
member.    I  had  the  great  joy  of  being  useful  in 


58  CARRY  ON 

setting  a  Hun  position  on  fire.     I  think  the  war 
will  be  over  in  a  twelvemonth. 

Our  great  joy  is  composing  menus  of  the 
meals  we'll  eat  when  we  get  home.  Good-bye 
for  the  present. 

Con. 

XVII 

October  ist,  1916. 

My  Dearest  M.  : 

Sunday  morning,  your  first  back  in  New- 
ark. You're  not  up  yet  owing  to  the  differ- 
ence in  time — I  can  imagine  the  quiet  house  with 
the  first  of  the  morning  stealing  greyly  in. 
You'll  be  presently  going  to  church  to  sit  in  your 
old-fashioned  mahogany  pew.  There's  not 
much  of  Sunday  in  our  atmosphere — only  the^ 
little  one  can  manage  to  keep  in  his  heart.  I 
shall  share  the  echo  of  yours  by  remembering. 

I'm  waiting  orders  at  the  present  moment  to 
go  forward  with  the  Colonel  and  pick  out  a  new 
gun  position.  You  know  I'm  very  happy — sat- 
isfied for  the  first  time  I'm  doing  something  big 
enough  to  make  me  forget  all  failures  and  self- 
contempts.  I  know  at  last  that  I  can  measure 
up  to  the  standard  I  have  always  coveted  for  my- 
self. So  don't  worry  yourselves  about  any  note 
of  hardship  that  you  may  interpret  into  my  let- 


CARRY  ON  59 

ters,  for  the  deprivation  is  fully  compensated  for 
by  the  winged  sense  of  exaltation  one  has. 

Things  have  been  a  little  warm  round  us 
lately.  A  gun  to  our  right,  another  to  our  rear 
and  another  to  our  front  were  knocked  out  with 
direct  hits.  We've  got  some  of  the  chaps  tak- 
ing their  meals  with  us  now  because  their  mess 
was  all  shot  to  blazes.  There  was  an  officer  who 
was  with  me  at  the  53rd  blown  thirty  feet  into 
the  air  while  I  was  watching.  He  picked  him- 
self up  and  insisted  on  carrying  on,  although  his 
face  was  a  mass  of  bruises.  I  walked  in  on  the 
biggest  engagement  of  the  entire  war  the  mo- 
ment I  came  out  here.  There  was  no  gradual 
breaking-in  for  me.  My  first  trip  to  the  front 
line  was  into  a  trench  full  of  dead. 

Have  you  seen  Lloyd  George's  great  speech? 
I'm  all  v>^ith  him.  No  matter  what  the  cost  and 
how  many  of  us  have  to  give  our  lives,  this  War 
must  be  so  finished  that  war  may  be  forever  at 
an, end.  If  the  devils  who  plan  wars  could  only 
see  the  abysmal  result  of  their  handiwork! 
Give  them  one  day  in  the  trenches  under  shell- 
fire  when  their  lives  aren't  worth  a  five  minutes' 
purchase — or  one  day  carrying  back  the  wounded 
through  this  tortured  country,  or  one  day  in  a 
Red  Cross  train.  No  one  can  imagine  the  dam- 
nable waste  and  Christlessness  of  this  battering 


6o  CARRY  ON 

of  human  flesh.  The  only  way  that  this  War  can 
be  made  holy  is  by  making  it  so  thorough  that 
war  will  be  finished  for  all  time. 

Papa  at  least  will  be  awake  by  now.  How 
familiar  the  old  house  seems  to  me — I  can  think 
of  the  place  of  every  picture.  Do  you  set  the 
victrola  going  now-a-days?  I  bet  you  play 
Boys  in  Khaki,  Boys  in  Blue. 

Please  send  me  anything  in  the  way  of  eat- 
ables that  the  goodness  of  your  hearts  can  imag- 
ine— also  smokes. 

Later. 

I  came  back  from  the  front-line  all  right  and 
have  since  been  hard  at  it  firing.  Your  letters 
reached  me  in  the  midst  of  a  bombardment — I 
read  them  in  a  kind  of  London  fog  of  gun- 
powder smoke,  with  my  steel  helmet  tilted  back, 
in  the  interval  of  commanding  my  section 
through  a  megaphone. 

Don't  suppose  that  Pm  in  any  way  unhappy — 
I'm  as  cheerful  as  a  cricket  and  do  twice  as 
much  hopping — I  have  to.  There's  something 
extraordinarily  bracing  about  taking  risks  and 
getting  away  with  it — especially  when  you  know 
that  you're  contributing  your  share  to  a  far- 
reaching  result.  My  mother  is  the  mother  of  a 
soldier  now,  and  soldiers'  mothers  don't  lie 
awake  at  night  imagining — they  just  say  a  prayer 


CARRY  ON  6 1 

for  their  sons  and  leave  everything  in  God's 
hands.  I'm  sure  you'd  far  rather  I  died  than 
not  play  the  man  to  the  fullest  of  my  strength. 
It  isn't  when  you  die  that  matters — it's  how. 
Not  but  what  I  intend  to  return  to  Newark  and 
make  the  house  reek  of  tobacco  smoke  before 
I've  done. 

We're  continually  in  action  now,  and  the  casu- 
alty to  B.  has  left  us  short-handed — moreover 
we're  helping  out  another  battery  which  has  lost 
two  officers.  As  you've  seen  by  the  papers, 
we've  at  last  got  the  Hun  on  the  run.  Three 
hundred  passed  me  the  other  day  unescorted, 
coming  in  to  give  themselves  up  as  prisoners. 
They're  the  dirtiest  lot  you  ever  set  eyes  on,  and 
looked  as  though  they  hadn't  eaten  for  months. 
I  wish  I  could  send  you  some  souvenirs.  But 
we  can't  send  them  out  of  France. 

I'm  scribbling  by  candlelight  and  everything's 
jumping  with  the  stamping  of  the  guns.  I  wear 
the  locket  and  cross  all  the  time. 

Yours  with  much  love. 

Con. 
XVIII 

October  13th,  1916. 
Dear  Ones: 

I  have  only  time  to  write  and  assure  you 
that  I  am  safe.     We're  living  in  trenches  at  pres- 


62  CARRY  ON 

ent — I  have  my  sleeping  bag  placed  on  a 
stretcher  to  keep  it  fairly  dry.  By  the  time  you 
get  this  we  expect  to  be  having  a  rest,  as  we've 
been  hard  at  it  now  for  an  unusually  long  time. 
How  I  wish  that  I  could  tell  you  so  many  things 
that  are  big  and  vivid  in  my  mind — -but  the  cen- 
sor  ! 

Yesterday  I  had  an  exciting  day.  I  was  up 
forward  when  word  came  through  that  an  officer 
still  further  forward  was  wounded  and  he'd 
been  caught  in  a  heavy  enemy  fire.  I  had  only 
a  kid  telephonist  with  me,  but  we  found  a 
stretcher,  went  forward  and  got  him  out.  The 
earth  was  hopping  up  and  down  like  pop-corn 
in  a  frying  pan.  The  unfortunate  thing  was 
that  the  poor  chap  died  on  the  way  out.  It  was 
only  the  evening  before  that  we  had  dined  to- 
gether and  he  had  told  me  what  he  was  going  to 
do  with  his  next  leave. 

God  bless  you  all, 

Con. 

XIX 

October  14th,  1916. 

Dearest  Mother  : 

I'm  still  all  right  and  well.  To-day  I  had 
the  funniest  experience  of  my  life — got  caught 
in  a  Hun  curtain  of  fire  and  had  to  lie  on  my 


CARRY  ON  63 

tummy  for  two  hours  in  a  trench  with  the  shells 
bursting  five  yards  from  me — and  never  a 
scratch.  You  know  how  I  used  to  wonder  what 
I'd  do  under  such  circumstances.  Well,  I 
laughed.  All  I  could  think  of  was  the  sleek  peo- 
ple walking  down  Fifth  Avenue,  and  the  equally 
sleek  crowds  taking  tea  at  the  Waldorf.  It 
struck  me  as  ludicrous  that  I,  who  had  been  one 
of  them,  should  be  lying  there  lunchless.  For 
a  little  while  I  was  slightly  deaf  with  the  con- 
cussions. 

That  poem  keeps  on  going  through  my  head, 

Oh,  to  come  home  once  more,  when  the  dusk  is  falling. 
To  see  the  nursery  lighted  and  the  children's  table  spread ; 

"Mother,  mother,  mother !"  the  eager  voices  calling, 
"The  baby  was  so  sleepy  that  he  had  to  go  to  bed !" 

Wouldn't  it  be  good,  instead  of  sitting  in  a 
Hun  dug-out? 

Yours  lovingly, 

Con. 

XX 

October  15th,  1916. 
Dear  Ones: 

We're  still  in  action,  but  are  in  hopes  that 
soon  we  may  be  moved  to  winter  quarters. 
We've  had  our  taste  of  mud,  and  are  anxious  to 
move  into  better  quarters  before  we  get  our  next. 


64  CARRY  ON 

I  think  I  told  you  that  our  O.  C.  had  got 
wounded  in  the  feet,  and  our  right  section  com- 
mander got  it  in  the  shoulder  a  little  earlier — so 
we're  a  bit  short-handed  and  find  ourselves  with 
plenty  of  work. 

I  have  curiously  lucid  moments  when  recent 
happenings  focus  themselves  in  what  seems  to  be 
their  true  perspective.  The  other  night  I  was 
Forward  Observation  officer  on  one  of  our  re- 
cent battlefields.  I  had  to  watch  the  front  all 
night  for  signals,  etc.  There  was  a  full  white 
moon  sailing  serenely  overhead,  and  when  I 
looked  at  it  I  could  almost  fancy  myself  back  in 
the  old  melancholy  pomp  of  autumn  woodlands 
where  the  leaves  were  red,  not  with  the  colour 
of  men's  blood.  My  mind  went  back  to  so  many 
by-gone  days — especially  to  three  years  ago.  I 
seemed  so  vastly  young  then,  upon  reflection. 
For  a  little  while  I  was  full  of  regrets  for  many 
things  wasted,  and  then  I  looked  at  the  battle- 
field with  its  scattered  kits  and  broken  rifles. 
Nothing  seemed  to  matter  very  much.  A  rat 
came  out — then  other  rats.  I  stood  there  feel- 
ing extraordinarily  aloof  from  all  things  that 
can  hurt,  and — you'll  smile — I  planned  a  novel. 
O,  if  I  get  back,  how  differently  I  shall  write! 
When  you've  faced  the  worst  in  so  many  forms, 


CARRY  ON  65 

you  lose  your  fear  and  arrive  at  peace.  There's 
a  marvellous  grandeur  about  all  this  carnage  and 
desolation — men's  souls  rise  above  the  distress — 
they  have  to  in  order  to  survive.  When  you  see 
how  cheap  men's  bodies  arc  you  cannot  help  but 
know  that  the  body  is  the  least  part  of  person- 
ality. 

You  can  let  up  on  your  nervousness  when 
you  get  this,  for  I  shall  almost  certainly  be  in  a 
safer  zone.  We've  done  more  than  our  share 
and  must  be  withdrawn  soon.  There's  hardly 
a  battery  which  does  not  deserve  a  dozen 
D.  S.  O.'s  with  a  V.  C.  or  two  thrown  in. 

It's  4.30  now — you'll  be  in  church  and,  I  hope, 
wearing  my  flowers.  Wait  till  I  come  back  and 
you  shall  go  to  church  with  the  biggest  bunch 
of  roses  that  ever  were  pinned  to  a  feminine 
chest.     I  wonder  when  that  will  be. 

We  have  heaps  of  humour  out  here.  You 
should  have  seen  me  this  morning,  sitting  on  the 
gun-seat  while  my  batman  cut  my  hair.  A  sand- 
bag was  spread  over  my  shoulders  in  place  of  a 
towel  and  the  gun-detachment  stood  round  and 
gave  advice.  I  don't  know  what  I  look  like,  for 
I  haven't  dared  to  gaze  into  my  shaving  mirror. 
Good  luck  to  us  all, 

Con. 


^  CARRY  ON 

XXI 

October  i8th,  1916. 
Dearest  M.  : 

I've  come  down  to  the  lines  to-day;  to- 
morrow I  go  back  again.  I'm  sitting  alone  in 
a  deep  chalk  dug-out — it  is  10  p.m.  and  I  have 
lit  a  fire  by  splitting  wood  with  a  bayonet. 
Your  letters  from  Montreal  reached  me  yester- 
day. They  came  up  in  the  water-cart  when  we'd 
all  begun  to  despair  of  mail.  It  was  wonderful 
the  silence  that  followed  while  every  one  went 
back  home  for  a  little  while,  and  most  of  them 
met  their  best  girls.  We've  fallen  into  the  habit 
of  singing  in  parts.  Jerusalem  the  Golden 
is  a  great  favourite  as  we  wait  for  our  break- 
fast— we  go  through  all  our  favourite  songs,  in- 
cluding Poor  Old  Adam  Was  My  Father.  Our 
greatest  favourite  is  one  which  is  symbolising 
the  hopes  that  are  in  so  many  hearts  on  this 
greatest  battlefield  in  history.  We  sing  it  un- 
der shell-fire  as  a  kind  of  prayer,  we  sing  it  as 
we  struggle  knee-deep  in  the  appalling  mud,  we 
sing  it  as  we  sit  by  a  candle  in  our  deep  cap- 
tured German  dug-outs.     It  runs  like  this: 

"There's  a  long,  long  trail  a-winding 
Into  the  land  of  my  dreams, 
Where  the  nightingales  are  singing 
And  a  white  moon  beams : 


CARRY  ON  ty 

There's  a  long,  long  night  of  waiting 
Until  my  dreams  all  come  true ; 
Till  the  day  when  I'll  be  going  down 
That  long,  long  trail  with  you." 

You  ought  to  be  able  to  get  it,  and  then  you  will 
be  singing  it  when  I'm  doing  it. 

No,  I  don't  know  what  to  ask  from  you  for 
Christmas — unless  a  plum  pudding  and  a  gen- 
eral surprise  box  of  sweets  and  food  stuffs.  If 
you  don't  mind  my  suggesting  it,  I  wouldn't  a 
bit  mind  a  Christmas  box  at  once — a  schoolboy's 
tuck  box.  I  wear  the  locket,  cross,  and  tie  all 
the  time  as  kind  of  charms  against  danger — they 
give  me  the  feeling  of  loving  hands  going  with 
me  everywhere. 

God  bless  you. 

Yours  ever. 

Con. 

XXII 

October  23rd,  1916. 
Dearest  All: 

As  you  know  I  have  been  in  action  ever 
since  I  left  England  and  am  still.  I've  hved  in 
various  extemporised  dwellings  and  am  at  pres- 
ent writing  from  an  eight  foot  deep  hole  dug  in 
the  ground  and  covered  over  with  galvanised 
iron  and  sand-bags.     We  have  made  ourselves 


68  CARRY  ON 

very  comfortable,  and  a  fire  is  burning — I  cor- 
rect that — comfortable  until  it  rains,  I  should 
say,  when  the  water  finds  its  own  level.  We 
have  just  finished  with  two  days  of  penetrating 
rain  and  mist — in  the  trenches  the  mud  was  up 
to  my  knees,  so  you  can  imagine  the  joy  of  wad- 
ing down  these  shell-torn  tunnels.  Good  thick 
socks  have  been  priceless. 

You'll  be  pleased  to  hear  that  two  days  ago 
I  was  made  Right  Section  Commander — which 
is  fairly  rapid  promotion.  It  means  a  good  deal 
more  work  and  responsibility,  but  it  gives  me  a 
contact  with  the  men  which  I  like. 

I  don't  know  when  I'll  get  leave — not  for  an- 
other two  months  anyway.  It  would  be  ripping 
if  I  had  word  in  time  for  you  to  run  over  to 
England  for  the  brief  nine  days. 

I  plan  novels  galore  and  wonder  whether  I 
shall  ever  write  them  the  way  I  see  them  now. 
My  imagination  is  to  an  extent  crushed  by  the 
stupendousness  of  reality.  I  think  I  am  changed 
in  some  stern  spiritual  way — stripped  of  flabbi- 
ness.  I  am  perhaps  harder — I  can't  say.  That 
I  should  be  a  novelist  seems  unreasonable — it's 
so  long  since  I  had  my  own  way  in  the  world 
and  met  any  one  on  artistic  terms.  But  I  have 
enough  ego  left  to  be  very  interested  in  my  book. 
And  by  the  way,  when  we're  out  at  the  front  and 


CARRY  ON  69 

the  battery  wants  us  to  come  in  they  simply 
'phone  up  the  password,  "Slaves  of  Freedom," 
the  meaning  of  which  we  all  understand. 

You  are  ever  in  my  thoughts,  and  I  pray  the 
day  may  not  be  far  distant  when  we  meet  again. 

Con. 

XXIII 

October  27th,  1916. 

Dearest  Family: 

All  to-day  I've  been  busy  registering  our 
guns.  There  is  little  chance  of  rest — one  would 
suppose  that  we  intended  to  end  the  v/ar  by  spring. 

Two  new  officers  joined  our  battery  from 
England,  which  makes  the  work  lighter.  One 
of  them  brings  the  news  that  D.,  one  of  the  two 
officers  who  crossed  over  from  England  with  me 
and  wandered  through  France  with  me  in  search 
of  our  Division,  is  already  dead.  He  was  a 
corking  fellow,  and  I'm  very  sorry.  He  was 
caught  by  a  shell  in  the  head  and  legs. 

I  am  still  living  in  a  sand-bagged  shell-hole 
eight  feet  beneath  the  level  of  the  ground.  I 
have  a  sleeping  bag  with  an  eider-down  inside 
it,  for  my  bed;  it  is  laid  on  a  stretcher,  which 
is  placed  in  a  roofed-in  trench.  For  meals, 
when  there  isn't  a  block  on  the  roads,  we  do  very 
well ;  we  subscribe  pretty  heavily  to  the  mess,  and 


70  CARRY  ON 

have  an  ofticer  back  at  the  wagon-lines  to  do  our 
purchasing.  When  we  move  forward  into  a  new 
position,  however,  we  go  pretty  short,  as  roads 
have  to  be  built  for  the  throng  of  traffic.  Most 
of  what  we  eat  is  tinned — and  I  never  want  to 
see  tinned  salmon  again  when  this  war  is  ended. 
I  have  a  personal  servant,  a  groom  and  two 
horses — but  haven't  been  on  a  horse  for  seven 
weeks  on  account  of  being  in  action.  We're  all 
pretty  fed  up  with  continuous  firing  and  living 
so  many  hours  in  the  trenches.  The  way  ar- 
tillery is  nm  to-day  an  artillery  lieutenant  is 
more  in  the  trenches  than  an  infantryman — the 
only  thing  he  doesn't  do  is  to  go  over  the  parapet 
in  an  attack.  And  one  of  our  chaps  did  that 
the  other  day,  charging  the  Huns  with  a  bar  of 
chocolate  in  one  hand  and  a  revolver  in  the 
other.  I  believe  he  set  a  fashion  which  will  be 
imitated.  Three  times  in  my  experience  I  have 
seen  the  infantry  jump  out  of  their  trenches 
and  go  across.  It's  a  sight  never  to  be  forgot- 
ten. One  time  there  were  machine  guns  behind 
me  and  they  sent  a  message  to  me,  asking  me  to 
lie  down  and  take  cover.  That  was  impossible, 
as  I  was  observing  for  my  brigade,  so  I  lay  on 
the  parapet  till  the  bullets  began  to  fall  too  close 
for  comfort,  then  I  dodged  out  into  a  shell-hole 
with   the   German  barrage  bursting  all  around 


CARRY  ON  71' 

me,  and  had  a  most  gorgeous  view  of  a  modem 
attack.  That  was  some  time  ago,  so  you  needn't 
be  nervous. 

Have  I  mentioned  rum  to  you?  I  never 
tasted  it  to  my  knowledge  until  I  came  out  here. 
We  get  it  served  us  whenever  we're  wet.  It's 
the  one  thing  which  keeps  a  man  alive  in  the 
winter — you  can  sleep  when  you're  drenched 
through  and  never  get  a  cold  if  you  take  it. 

At  night,  by  a  fire,  eight  feet  underground, 
we  sing  all  the  dear  old  songs.  We  manage  a 
kind  of  glee — Clementina,  The  Long,  Long  Trail, 
Three  Blind  Mice,  Long,  Long  Ago,  Rock  of 
Ages.     Hymns  are  quite  favourites. 

Don't  worry  about  me;  your  prayers  weave 
round  me  a  mantle  of  defence. 

Yours  with  more  love  than  I   can   write, 

Con. 

XXIV 

October  31st,  1916. 
Hallowe'en. 

Dearest  People: 

Once  more  I'm  taking  the  night-firing  and 
so  have  a  chance  to  write  to  you.  I  got  letters 
from  you  all,  and  they  each  deserve  answers,  but 
I  have  so  little  time  to  write.  We've  been  hav- 
ing beastly  weather — drowned  out  of  our  little 


^2  CARRY  ON 

houses  below  ground,  with  rivers  running  through 
our  beds.  The  mud  is  once  more  up  to  our  knees 
and  gets  into  whatever  we  eat.  The  wonder  is 
that  we  keep  healthy — I  suppose  it's  the  open  air. 
My  throat  never  troubles  me  and  I'm  free  from 
colds  in  spite  of  wet  feet.  The  main  disadvan- 
tage is  that  we  rarely  get  a  chance  to  wash  or 
change  our  clothes.  Your  ideas  of  an  army  with 
its  buttons  all  shining  is  quite  erroneous ;  we  look 
like  drunk  and  disorderlies  who  have  spent  the 
night  in  the  gutter — and  we  have  the  same  in- 
stinct for  fighting. 

In  the  trenches  the  other  day  I  heard  mother's 
Suffolk  tongue  and  had  a  jolly  talk  with  a  chap 
who  shared  many  of  my  memories.  It  was  his 
first  trip  in  and  the  Huns  were  shelling  badly,  but 
he  didn't  seem  at  all  upset. 

We're  still  hard  at  it  and  have  given  up  all 
idea  of  a  rest — the  only  way  we'll  get  one  is  with 
a  blighty.  You  say  how  often  you  tell  yourselves 
that  the  same  moon  looks  down  on  me;  it  does, 
but  on  a  scene  how  different !  We  advance  over 
old  battlefields — everything  is  blasted.  If  you 
start  digging,  you  turn  up  what's  left  of  some- 
thing human.  If  there  were  any  grounds  for  su- 
perstition, surely  the  places  in  which  I  have  been 
should  be  ghost-haunted.  One  never  thinks 
about  it.     For  myself  I  have  increasingly  the  feel- 


CARRY  ON  73 

ing  that  I  am  protected  by  your  prayers;  I  tell 
myself  so  when  I  am  in  danger. 

Here  I  sit  in  an  old  sweater  and  muddy 
breeches,  the  very  reverse  of  your  picture  of  a 
soldier,  and  I  imagine  to  myself  your  receipt  of 
this.  Our  chief  interest  is  to  enquire  whether 
milk,  jam  and  mail  have  come  up  from  the  wagon- 
lines;  it  seems  a  faery-tale  that  there  are  places 
where  milk  and  jam  can  be  had  for  the  buying. 
See  how  simple  we  become. 

Poor  little  house  at  Kootenay !  I  hate  to  think 
of  it  empty.  We  had  such  good  times  there 
twelve  months  ago.  They  have  a  song  here  to  a 
nursery  rhyme  lilt,  Apres  le  Guerre  Finis;  it 
goes  on  to  tell  of  all  the  good  times  we'll  have 
when  the  war  is  ended.  Every  night  I  invent  a 
new  story  of  my  own  celebration  of  the  event, 
usually,  as  when  I  was  a  kiddie,  just  before  I  fall 
asleep — only  it  doesn't  seem  possible  that  the  war 
will  ever  end. 

I  hear  from  the  boys  very  regularly.  There's 
just  the  chance  that  I  may  get  leave  to  London 
in  the  New  Year  and  meet  them  before  they  set 
out.  I  always  picture  you  with  your  heads  high 
in  the  air.  I'm  glad  to  think  of  you  as  proud 
because  of  the  pain  we've  made  you  suffer. 

Once  again  I  shall  think  of  you  on  Papa's 
birthday.     I  don't  think  this  will  be  the  saddest 


74  CARRY  ON 

he  will  have  to  remember.  It  might  have  been 
if  we  three  boys  had  still  all  been  with  him.  If 
I  were  a  father,  I  would  prefer  at  all  costs  that 
my  sons  should  be  men.  What  good  comrades 
we've  always  been,  and  what  long  years  of  happy 
times  we  have  in  memory — all  the  way  down 
from  a  little  boy  in  a  sailor-suit  to  Kootenay! 

I  fell  asleep  in  the  midst  of  this.  I've  now  got 
to  go  out  and  start  the  other  gun  firing.  With 
very  much  love. 

Yours, 


XXV 


Con. 


November  ist,  1916. 


My  Dearest  M.  : 

Peace  after  a  storm !  Your  letter  was  not 
brought  up  by  the  water-wagon  this  evening,  but 
by  an  orderly — the  mud  prevented  wheel-traffic. 
I  was  just  sitting  down  to  read  it  when  Fritz  be- 
gan to  pay  us  too  much  attention.  I  put  down 
your  letter,  grabbed  my  steel  helmet,  rushed  out 
to  see  where  the  shells  were  falling,  and  then 
cleared  my  men  to  a  safer  area.  (By  the  way, 
did  I  tell  you  that  I  had  been  made  Right  Sec- 
tion Commander?)  After  about  half  an  hour  I 
came  back  and  settled  down  by  a  fire  made  of 
smashed  ammunition  boxes  in  a  stove  borrowed 


CARRY  ON  75' 

from  a  ruined  cottage.  I'm  always  ashamed  that 
my  letters  contain  so  little  news  and  are  so  un- 
interesting. This  thing  is  so  big  and  dreadful 
that  it  does  not  bear  putting  down  on  paper.  I 
read  the  papers  with  the  accounts  of  singing  sol- 
diers and  other  rubbish ;  they  depict  us  as  though 
we  were  a  lot  of  hair-brained  idiots  instead  of 
men  fully  realising  our  danger,  who  plod  on  be- 
cause it's  our  duty.  I've  seen  a  good  many  men 
killed  by  now — we  all  have — consequently  the 
singing  soldier  story  makes  us  smile.  We've  got 
a  big  job;  we  know  that  we've  got  to  "Carry 
On"  whatever  happens — so  we  wear  a  stern  grin 
and  go  to  it.  There's  far  more  heroism  in  the 
attitude  of  men  out  here  than  in  the  footlight  at- 
titude that  journalists  paint  for  the  public.  It 
isn't  a  singing  matter  to  go  on  firing  a  gun  when 
gun-pits  are  going  up  in  smoke  within  sight  of 
you. 

What  a  terrible  desecration  war  is!  You  go 
out  one  week  and  look  through  your  glasses  at  a 
green,  smiling  country — little  churches,  villages 
nestling  among  woods,  white  roads  running 
across  a  green  carpet ;  next  week  you  see  nothing 
but  ruins  and  a  country-side  pitted  with  shell- 
holes.  All  night  the  machine  guns  tap  like  rivet- 
ting  machines  when  a  New  York  sky-scraper  is 
in  the  building.     Then  suddenly  in  the  night  a 


^e  CARRY  ON 

bombing"  attack  will  start,  and  the  sky  grows 
white  with  signal  rockets.  Orders  come  in  for 
artillery  retaliation,  and  your  guns  begin  to  stamp 
the  ground  like  stallions ;  in  the  darkness  on  every 
side  you  can  see  them  snorting  fire.  Then  still- 
ness again,  while  Death  counts  his  harvest;  the 
white  rockets  grow  fainter  and  less  hysterical. 
For  an  hour  there  is  blackness. 

My  batman  consoles  himself  with  singing, 

"Pack  up  your  troubles  in  your  old  kit-bag, 
And  smile,  smile,  smile." 

There's  a  lot  in  his  philosophy — it's  best  to  go  on 
smiling  even  when  some  one  who  was  once  your 
pal  lies  forever  silent  in  his  blanket  on  a 
stretcher. 

The  great  uplifting  thought  is  that  we  have 
proved  ourselves  men.  In  our  death  we  set  a 
standard  which  in  ordinary  life  we  could  never 
have  followed.  Inevitably  we  should  have  sunk 
below  our  highest  self.  Here  we  know  that  the 
world  will  remember  us  and  that  our  loved  ones, 
in  spite  of  tears,  will  be  proud  of  us.  What  God 
will  say  to  us  we  cannot  guess — but  He  can't  be 
too  hard  on  men  who  did  their  duty.  I  think  we 
all  feel  that  trivial  former  failures  are  washed  out 
by  this  final  sacrifice.  When  little  M.  used  to 
recite  "Breathes  there  a  man  with  soul  so  dead, 


CARRY  ON  jy 

who  never  to  himself  had  said,  'This  is  my  own, 
my  native  land,'  "  I  never  thought  that  I  should 
have  the  chance  tliat  has  now  been  given  to  me. 
I  feel  a  great  and  solemn  gratitude  that  I  have 
been  thought  worthy.  Life  has  suddenly  become 
effective  and  worthy  by  reason  of  its  carelessness 
of  death. 

By  the  way,  that  Princeton  man  I  mentioned  so 
long  ago  was  killed  forty  yards  away  from  me 
on  my  first  trip  into  the  trenches.  Probably  G. 
M'C.  and  his  other  friends  know  by  now.  He 
was  the  first  man  I  ever  saw  snuffed  out. 

Pm  wearing  your  mittens  and  find  them  a  great 
comfort.  Pll  look  forward  to  some  more  of  your 
socks — I  can  do  with  plenty  of  them.  If  any  of 
your  friends  are  making  things  for  soldiers,  I 
wish  you'd  get  them  to  send  them  to  this  battery, 
as  they  would  be  gratefully  accepted  by  the  men. 

I  wish  I  could  come  to  The  Music  Master  with 
you.  I  wonder  how  long  till  we  do  all  those  in- 
timately family  things  together  again. 

Good-bye,  my  dearest  M.  I  live  for  home  let- 
ters and  am  rarely  disappointed. 

God  bless  you,  and  love  to  you  all. 
Yours  ever, 

Con. 


78  CARRY  ON 

XXVI 

November  4th,  1916. 

My  Dearest  Mother  : 

This  morning  I  was  wakened  up  in  the 
gunpit  where  I  was  sleeping  by  the  arrival  of  the 
most  wonderful  parcel  of  mail.  It  was  really  a 
kind  of  Christmas  morning  for  me.  My  servant 
had  lit  a  fire  in  a  punctured  petrol  can  and  the 
place  looked  very  cheery.  First  of  all  entered  an 
enormous  affair,  which  turned  out  to  be  a  stove 
which  C.  had  sent.  Then  there  was  a  sand-bag 
containing  all  your  gifts.  You  may  bet  I  made 
for  that  first,  and  as  each  knot  was  undone  re- 
membered the  loving  hands  that  had  done  it  up. 
I  am  now  going  up  to  a  twenty-four-hour  shift 
of  observing,  and  shall  take  up  the  malted  milk 
and  some  blocks  of  chocolate  for  a  hot  drink. 
It  somehov/  makes  you  seem  vei-y  near  to  me  to 
receive  things  packed  with  your  hands.  When 
I  go  forward  I  shall  also  take  candles  and  a  copy 
of  Anne  Veronica  with  me,  so  that  if  I  get  a 
chance  I  can  forget  time. 

Always  when  I  write  to  you  odds  and  ends 
come  to  mind,  smacking  of  local  colour.  After 
an  attack  some  months  ago  I  met  a  solitary  pri- 
vate wandering  across  a  shell-torn  fields  I 
watched  him  and  thought  something  was  wrong 


CARRY  ON  79 

by  the  aimlessness  of  his  progress.  When  I 
spoke  to  him,  he  looked  at  me  mistily  and  said, 
"Dead  men.  Moonlit  road."  He  kept  on  re- 
peating the  phrase,  and  it  was  all  that  one  could 
get  out  of  him.  Probably  the  dead  men  and  the 
moonlit  road  were  the  last  sights  he  had  seen  be- 
fore he  went  insane. 

Another  touching  thing  happened  two  days  ago. 
A  Major  turned  up  who  had  travelled  fifty  miles 
by  motor  lorries  and  any  conveyance  he  could 
pick  up  on  the  road.  He  had  left  his  unit  to 
come  to  have  a  glimpse  of  our  front-line  trench 
where  his  son  was  buried.  The  boy  had  died 
there  some  days  ago  in  going  over  the  parapet.  I 
persuaded  him  that  he  ought  not  to  go  alone,  and 
that  in  any  case  it  wasn't  a  healthy  spot.  At  last 
he  consented  to  let  me  take  him  to  a  point  from 
which  he  could  see  the  ground  over  which  his 
son  had  attacked  and  led  his  men.  The  sun 
was  sinking  behind  us.  He  stood  there  very 
straightly,  peering  through  my  glasses — and  then 
forgot  all  about  me  and  began  speaking  to  his  son 
in  childish  love-words.  "Gone  West,"  they  call 
dying  out  here — we  rarely  say  that  a  man  is  dead. 
I  found  out  afterwards  that  it  was  the  boy's 
mother  the  Major  was  thinking  of  when  he 
pledged  himself  to  visit  the  grave  in  the  front- 
line. 


8o  CARRY  ON 

But  there  are  happier  things  than  that.  For 
instance,  you  should  hear  us  singing  at  night  in 
our  dug-out — every  tune  we  ever  learnt,  I  be- 
lieve. Silver  Threads  Among  the  Gold,  In  the 
Gloaming,  The  Star  of  Bethlehem,  I  Hear  You 
Calling  Me,  interspersed  with  Everybody  Works 
but  Father,  and  Poor  Old  Adam,  etc. 

I  wish  I  could  know  in  time  when  I  get  my 
leave  for  you  to  come  over  and  meet  me.  I'm 
going  to  spend  my  nine  days  in  the  most  glorious 
ways  imaginable.  To  start  with  I  won't  eat  any- 
thing that's  canned  and,  to  go  on,  I  won't  get  out 
of  bed  till  I  feel  inclined.  And  if  you're 
there ! 

Dreams  and  nonsense !  God  bless  you  all  and 
keep  us  near  and  safe  though  absent.  Alive  or 
"Gone  West"  I  shall  never  be  far  from  you;  you 
may  depend  on  that — and  I  shall  always  hope  to 
feel  you  brave  and  happy.  This  is  a  great 
game — cheese-mites  pitting  themselves  against  all 
the  splendours  of  Death.  Please,  please  write 
well  ahead,  so  that  I  may  not  miss  your  Christ- 
mas letters. 

Yours  lovingly, 

Con. 


CARRY  ON  8i 

XXVII 

November  6th,  191 6. 
My  Dear  Ones  : 

Such  a  wonderful  day  it  has  been — I 
scarcely  know  where  to  start.  I  came  down  last 
night  from  twenty-four  hours  in  the  mud,  where 
I  had  been  observing.  I'd  spent  the  night  in  a 
hole  dug  in  the  side  of  the  trench  and  a  dead 
Hun  forming  part  of  the  roof.  I'd  sat  there  re- 
living so  many  things — the  ecstatic  moments  of 
my  life  when  I  first  touched  fame — and  my  feet 
were  so  cold  that  I  could  not  feel  them,  so  I 
thought  all  the  harder  of  the  pleasant  things  of 
the  past.  Then,  as  I  say,  I  came  back  to  the  gun 
position  to  learn  that  I  was  to  have  one  day  off 
at  the  back  of  the  lines.  You  can't  imagine  what 
that  meant  to  me — one  day  in  a  country  that  is 
green,  one  day  where  there  is  no  shell-fire,  one 
day  where  you  don't  turn  up  corpses  with  your 
tread!  For  two  months  I  have  never  left  the 
guns  except  to  go  forward  and  I  have  never  been 
from  under  shell-fire.  All  night  long  as  I  have 
slept  the  ground  had  been  shaken  by  the  stamp- 
ing of  the  guns — and  now  after  two  months,  to 
come  back  to  comparative  normality!  The  rea- 
son for  this  privilege  being  granted  was  that  the 
powers  that  be  had  come  to  the  conclusion  that 


82  CARRY  ON 

it  was  time  I  had  a  bath.  Since  I  sleep  in  my 
clothes  and  water  is  too  valuable  for  washing 
anything  but  the  face  and  hands,  they  were  prob- 
ably right  in  their  guess  at  my  condition. 

So  with  the  greatest  holiday  of  my  life  in  pros- 
pect I  went  to  the  empty  gunpit  in  which  I  sleep, 
and  turned  in.  This  morning  I  set  out  early  with 
my  servant,  tramping  back  across  the  long,  long 
battlefields  which  our  boys  have  won.  The  mud 
was  knee-deep  in  places,  but  we  floundered  on 
till  we  came  to  our  old  and  deserted  gun-position 
where  my  horses  waited  for  me.  From  there  I 
rode  to  the  wagon-lines — the  first  time  I've  sat 
a  horse  since  I  came  into  action.  Far  be- 
hind me  the  thunder  of  winged  murder  grew 
more  faint.  The  country  became  greener;  trees 
even  had  leaves  upon  them  which  fluttered  against 
the  grey-blue  sky.  It  was  wonderful — like 
awaking  from  an  appalling  nightmare.  My  lit- 
tle beast  was  fresh  and  seemed  to  share  my  joy, 
for  she  stepped  out  bravely. 

When  I  arrived  at  the  wagon-lines  I  would  not 
wait — I  longed  to  see  something  even  greener  and 
quieter.  My  groom  packed  up  some  oats  and 
away  we  went  again.  My  first  objective  was  the 
military  baths;  I  lay  in  hot  water  for  half-an- 
hour  and  read  the  advertisements  of  my  book. 
As  I  lay  there,  for  the  first  time  since  I've  beei) 


CARRY  ON  83 

out,  I  began  to  get  a  half-way  true  perspective  of 

myself.  What's  left  of  the  egotism  of  the  author 
came  to  life,  and — now  laugh — I  planned  my  next 
novel — planned  it  to  the  sound  of  men  singing, 
because  they  were  clean  for  the  first  time  in 
months.  I  left  my  towels  and  soap  with  a  mili- 
tary policeman,  by  the  roadside,  and  went  pranc- 
ing off  along  country  roads  in  search  of  the  al- 
most forgotten  places  where  people  don't  kill  one 
another.  Was  it  imagination?  There  seemed 
to  me  to  be  a  different  look  in  the  faces  of  the 
men  I  met — for  the  time  being  they  were  neither 
hunters  nor  hunted.  There  were  actually  cows 
in  the  fields.  At  one  point,  where  pollarded  trees 
stand  like  a  Hobbema  sketch  against  the  sky,  a 
group  of  officers  were  coursing  a  hare,  following 
a  big  black  hound  on  horseback.  We  lost  our 
way.  A  drenching  rainstorm  fell  over  us — we 
didn't  care;  and  we  saw  as  we  looked  back  a 
most  beautiful  thing — a  rainbow  over  green  fields. 
It  was  as  romantic  as  the  first  rainbow  in  child- 
hood. 

All  day  I  have  been  seeing  lovely  and  familiar 
things  as  though  for  the  first  time.  I've  been  a 
sort  of  Lazarus,  rising  out  of  his  tomb  and  prais- 
ing God  at  the  sound  of  a  divine  voice.  You 
don't  know  how  exquisite  a  ploughed  field  can 


84  CARRY  ON 

look,  especially  after  rain,  unless  you  have  feared 
that  you  might  never  see  one  again. 

I  came  to  a  grey  little  village,  where  civilians 
were  still  living,  and  then  to  a  gate  and  a  garden. 
In  the  cottage  was  a  French  peasant  woman  who 
smiled,  patted  my  hair  because  it  was  curly,  and 
chattered  interminably.  The  result  was  a  huge 
omelette  and  a  bottle  of  champagne.  Then  came 
a  touch  of  naughtiness — a  lady  visitor  with  a 
copy  of  La  Vie  Parisienne,  which  she  promptly 
bestowed  on  the  English  soldier.  I  read  it,  and 
dreamt  of  the  time  when  I  should  walk  the 
Champs  Elysees  again.  It  was  growing  dusk 
when  I  turned  back  to  the  noise  of  battle.  There 
was  a  white  moon  in  a  milky  sky.  Motor-bikes 
fled  by  me,  great  lorries  driven  by  Jehus  from 
London  buses,  and  automobiles  which  too  poign- 
antly had  been  Strand  taxis  and  had  taken  lovers 
home  from  the  Gaiety.  I  jogged  along  thinking 
very  little,  but  supremely  happy.  Now  I'm  back 
at  the  wagon-line;  to-morrow  I  go  back  to  the 
guns.  Meanwhile  I  write  to  you  by  a  guttering 
candle. 

Life,  how  I  love  you!  What  a  wonderful 
kindly  thing  I  could  make  of  you  to-night. 
Strangely  the  vision  has  come  to  me  of  all  that 
you  mean.     Now  I  could  write.     So  soon  you 


CARRY  ON  85 

may  go  from  me  or  be  changed  into  a  form  of 
existence  which  all  my  training  has  taught  me 
to  dread.  After  death  is  there  only  nothingness? 
I  think  that  for  those  who  have  missed  love  in 
this  life  there  must  be  compensations — the  little 
children  whom  they  ought  to  have  had,  perhaps. 
To-day,  after  so  many  weeks,  I  have  seen  little 
children  again. 

And  yet,  so  strange  a  havoc  does  this  war  work 
that,  if  I  have  to  "Go  West,"  I  shall  go  proudly 
and  quietly.  I  have  seen  too  many  men  die 
bravely  to  make  a  fuss  if  my  turn  comes.  A 
mixed  passenger  list  old  Father  Charon  must 
have  each  night — Englishmen,  Frenchmen,  and 
Huns.  To-morrow  I  shall  have  another  sight 
of  the  greenness  and  then — the  guns. 

I  don't  know  whether  I  have  been  able  to  make 
any  of  my  emotions  clear  to  you  in  my  letters. 
Terror  has  a  terrible  fascination.  Up  to  now  I 
have  ahvays  been  afraid — afraid  of  small  fears. 
At  last  I  meet  fear  itself  and  it  stings  my  pride 
into  an  unpremeditated  courage. 

I've  just  had  a  pile  of  letters  from  you  all. 
How  ripping  it  is  to  be  remembered!  Letters 
keep  one  civilised. 

It's  late  and  I'm  very  tired.  God  bless  you 
each  and  all. 

Con. 


S6  CARRY  ON 

XXVIII 

November  isth,  1916. 

Dear  Father: 

I've  owed  you  a  letter  for  some  time,  but 
I've  been  getting  very  little  leisure.  You  can't 
send  steel  messages  to  the  Kaiser  and  love-notes 
to  your  family  in  the  same  breath. 

I  am  amazed  at  the  spirit  you  three  are  show- 
ing and  almighty  proud  that  you  can  muster 
such  courage.  I  suppose  none  of  us  quite  real- 
ised our  strength  till  it  came  to  the  test.  There 
was  a  time  when  we  all  doubted  our  own  heroism, 
I  think  we  were  typical  of  our  age.  Every  novel 
of  the  past  ten  years  has  been  more  or  less  a 
study  in  sentiment  and  self-distrust.  We  used 
to  wonder  what  kind  of  stuff  Drake's  men  were 
made  of  that  they  could  jest  while  they  died. 
We  used  to  contrast  ourselves  with  them  to  our 
own  disfavour.  Well,  we  know  now  that  when 
there's  a  New  World  to  be  discovered  we  can 
still  rise  up  reincarnated  into  spiritual  pirates. 
It  wasn't  the  men  of  our  age  who  were  at  fault, 
but  the  New  World  that  was  lacking.  Our  New 
World  is  the  Kingdom  of  Heroism,  the  doors  of 
which  are  flung  so  wide  that  the  meanest  of  us 
may  enter.  I  know  men  out  here  who  are  the 
dependable  daredevils  of  their  brigades,  who  in 


CARRY  ON  87 

peace  times  were  nuisances  and  as  soon  as  peace 
is  declared  will  become  nuisances  again.  At  the 
moment  they're  fine,  laughing  at  Death  and  smil- 
ing at  the  chance  of  agony.  There's  a  man  I 
know  of  who  had  a  record  sheet  of  crimes. 
When  he  was  out  of  action  he  was  always  drunk 
and  up  for  office.  To  get  rid  of  him,  they  put 
him  into  the  trench  mortars  and  within  a  month 
he  had  won  his  D.  C.  M.  He  came  out  and  went 
on  the  spree — this  particular  spree  consisted  in 
stripping  a  Highland  officer  of  his  kilts  on  a 
moonlight  night.  For  this  he  was  sentenced  to 
several  months  in  a  military  prison,  but  asked  to 
be  allowed  to  serve  his  sentence  in  the  trenches. 
He  came  out  from  his  punishment  a  King's  ser- 
geant— which  means  that  whatever  he  did  no- 
body could  degrade  him.  He  got  this  for  lifting 
his  trench  mortar  over  the  parapet  when  all  the 
detachment  were  killed.  Carrying  it  out  into  a 
shell-hole,  he  held  back  the  Hun  attack  and  saved 
the  situation.  He  got  drunk  again,  and  again 
chose  to  be  returned  to  the  trenches.  This  time 
his  head  was  blown  off  while  he  was  engaged  in 
a  special  feat  of  gallantry.  What  are  you  to  say 
to  such  men  ?  Ordinarily  they'd  be  blackguards, 
but  war  lifts  them  into  splendour.  In  the  same 
way  you  see  mild  men,  timid  men,  almost  girlish 
men,   carrying  out  duties  which  in  other  wars 


88  CARRY  ON 

would  have  won  V.  C.'s.  I  don't  think  the  soul 
of  courage  ever  dies  out  of  the  race  any  more 
than  the  capacity  for  love.  All  it  means  is  that 
the  occasion  is  not  present.  For  myself  I  try 
to  analyse  my  emotions;  am  I  simply  numb,  or 
do  I  imitate  other  people's  coolness  and  shall  I 
fear  life  again  when  the  war  is  ended?  There 
is  no  explanation  save  the  great  army  phrase 
"Carry  on."  We  "carry  on"  because,  if  we 
don't,  we  shall  let  other  men  down  and  put  their 
lives  in  danger.  And  there's  more  than  that — 
we  all  want  to  live  up  to  the  standard  that 
prompted  us  to  come. 

One  talks  about  splendour — but  war  isn't 
splendid  except  in  the  individual  sense.  A  man 
by  his  own  self-conquest  can  make  it  splendid 
for  himself,  but  in  the  massed  sense  it's  squalid. 
There's  nothing  splendid  about  a  battlefield  when 
the  fight  is  ended — shreds  of  what  once  were  men, 
tortured,  levelled  landscapes — the  barbaric  lone- 
liness of  Hell.  I  shall  never  forget  my  first  dead 
man.  He  was  a  signalling  officer,  lying  in  the 
dawn  on  a  muddy  hill.  I  thought  he  was  asleep 
at  first,  but  when  I  looked  more  closely,  I  saw 
that  his  shoulder  blade  was  showing  white 
through  his  tunic.  He  was  wearing  black  boots. 
It's  odd,  but  the  sight  of  black  boots  have  the 
same  effect   on  me   now  that  black  and   white 


CARRY  ON  89 

stripes  had  in  childhood.  I  have  the  supersti- 
tious feehng  that  to  wear  them  would  bring  me 
bad  luck. 

To-night  we've  been  singing  in  parts,  Back 
in  the  Dear  Dead  Days  Beyond  Recall — a  mourn- 
ful kind  of  ditty  to  sing  under  the  circum- 
stances— so  mournful  that  we  had  to  have  a  game 
of  five  hundred  to  cheer  us  up. 

It's  now  nearly  2  a.m.,  and  I  have  to  go  out  to 
the  guns  again  before  I  go  to  bed.  I  carry  your 
letters  about  in  my  pockets  and  read  them  at  odd 
intervals  in  all  kinds  of  places  that  you  can't 
imagine. 

Cheer  up  and  remember  that  I'm  quite  happy. 
I  wish  you  could  be  with  me  for  just  one  day 
to  understand. 

Yours, 

Con. 

XXIX 

December  3rd,  1916. 
Dear  Boys: 

By  this  time  you  will  be  all  through  your 
exams  and  I  hope  have  both  passed.  It'll  be 
splendid  if  you  can  go  together  to  the  same  sta- 
tion. You  envy  me,  you  say ;  well,  I  rather  envy 
you.  I'd  like  to  be  with  you.  You,  at  least, 
don't   have   Napoleon's    fourth  antagonist   with 


90  CARRY  ON 

which  to  contend — mud.  But  at  present  I'm 
clean  and  billeted  in  an  estaminet,  in  a  not  toe 
bad  little  village.  There's  an  old  mill  and  still 
older  church,  and  the  usual  farmhouses  with  the 
indispensable  pile  of  manure  under  the  front 
windows.  We  shall  have  plenty  of  hard  work 
here,  licking  our  men  into  shape  and  re-fitting. 

You  know  how  I've  longed  to  sleep  between 
sheets;  I  can  now,  but  find  them  so  cold  that  I 
still  use  my  sleeping  bag — such  is  human  incon- 
sistency. But  yesterday  I  had  a  boiling  bath — 
as  good  a  bath  as  could  be  found  in  a  New  York 
hotel — and  I  am  CLEAN. 

I  woke  up  this  morning  to  hear  some  one  sing- 
ing Casey  Jones — consequently  I  thought  of 
former  Christmases.  My  mind  has  been  travel- 
ling back  very  much  of  late.  Suddenly  I  see 
something  here  which  reminds  me  of  the  time 
when  E.  and  I  were  at  Lisieux,  or  even  of  our 
Saturday  excursions  to  Nelson  vv^hen  we  were  all 
together  at  the  ranch. 

Did  I  tell  you  that  B.,  our  officer  who  was 
wounded  two  months  ago,  has  just  returned  to 
us.  This  morning  he  got  news  that  his  young 
brother  has  been  killed  in  the  place  which  we  have 
left.  I  wonder  when  we  shall  grow  tired  of 
stabbing  and  shooting  and  killing.  It  seems  to  me 
that  the  war  cannot  end  in  less  than  two  years. 


CARRY  ON  91 

I  have  made  myself  nice  to  the  Brigade  in- 
terpreter and  he  has  found  me  a  delightful  room 
with  electric  light  and  a  fire.  It's  in  an  old 
farmhouse  with  a  brick  terrace  in  front.  My 
room  is  on  the  ground  floor  and  tile-paved.  The 
chairs  are  rush-bottomed  and  there  are  old  quaint 
china  plates  on  the  shelves.  There  is  also  a 
quite  charming  mademoiselle.  So  you  see,  you 
don't  need  to  pity  me  any  more. 

Just  at  present  I'm  busy  getting  up  the  Brigade 
Christmas  Entertainment.  The  Colonel  asked 
me  to  do  it,  otherwise  I  should  have  said  no,  as 
I  want  all  the  time  I  can  get  to  myself.  You 
can't  think  how  jolly  it  is  to  sit  again  in  a  room 
which  is  tem.porarily  yours  after  living  in  dug- 
outs, herded  side  by  side  with  other  men.  I  can 
be  me  now,  and  not  a  soldier  of  thousands  when 
I  write.  You  shall  hear  from  me  again  soon. 
Hope  you're  having  a  ripping  time  in  London. 
Yours  ever, 

Con. 

XXX 

December  5th,  1916. 

Dearest  M.  : 

I've  just  come  in  from  my  last  tour  of 
inspection  as  orderly  officer,  and  it's  close  on 
midnight.     I'm  getting  this  line  off  to  you  to  let 


92  CARRY  ON 

you  know  that  I  expect  to  get  my  nine  days' 
leave  about  the  beginning  of  January.  How  I 
wish  it  were  possible  to  have  you  in  London  when 
I  arrive,  or,  failing  that,  to  spend  my  leave  in 
New  York! 

To-morrow  I  make  an  early  start  on  horse- 
back for  a  market  of  the  old-fashioned  sort  which 
is  held  at  a  town  near  by.  Can  you  dimly  pic- 
ture me  with  my  groom,  followed  by  a  mess- 
cart,  going  from  stall  to  stall  and  bartering  with 
the  peasants  ?  It'll  be  rather  good  fun  and  some- 
thing quite  out  of  my  experience. 

Christmas  will  be  over  by  the  time  you  get  this, 
and  I  do  hope  that  you  had  a  good  one.  I  paused 
to  talk  to  the  other  officers;  they  say  that  they 
are  sure  that  you  are  very  beautiful  and  have  a 
warm  heart,  and  would  like  to  send  them  a  iive- 
storey  layer  cake,  half  a  dozen  bottles  of  port 
and  one  Paris  chef.  At  present  I  am  the  Dives 
of  the  mess  and  dole  out  luxuries  to  these  Laz- 
aruses. 

Good-bye  for  the  present. 

Yours  ever  lovingly, 

G>N. 


CARRY  ON  93 

XXXI 

December  6th,  1916. 

Dearest  M.  : 

I've  just  undone  your  Christmas  parcels, 
and  already  I  am  wearing  the  waistcoat  and 
socks,  and  my  m.outh  is  hot  with  the  ginger. 

I  expect  to  get  leave  for  England  on  January 
loth.  I  do  wish  it  might  be  possible  for  some 
of  you  to  cross  the  ocean  and  be  in  London  with 
me — and  I  don't  see  what  there  is  to  prevent  you. 
Unless  the  war  ends  sooner  than  any  of  us  ex- 
pect, it  is  not  likely  that  I  shall  get  another  leave 
in  less  than  nine  months.  So,  if  you  want  to 
come  and  if  there's  time  when  you  receive  this 
letter,  just  hop  on  a  boat  and  let's  see  what  Lon- 
don looks  like  together. 

I  wonder  what  kind  of  a  Christmas  you'll  have. 
I  shall  picture  it  all.  You  may  hear  me  tiptoeing 
up  the  stairs  if  you  listen  very  hard.  Where 
does  the  soul  go  in  sleep?  Surely  mine  flies  back 
to  where  all  of  you  dear  people  are. 

I  came  back  to  my  farm  yesterday  to  find  a 
bouquet  of  paper  flowers  at  the  head  of  my  bed 
with  a  note  pinned  on  it.  Over  my  fire-place  was 
hung  a  pathetic  pair  of  farm-girls'  heavy  Sun- 
day boots,  all  brightly  polished,  with  two  other 
notes  pinned  on  them.     The  Feast  of  St.  Nicholas 


94  CARRY  ON 

on  December  7th  is  an  opportunity  for  unmar- 
ried men  to  be  reminded  that  there  are  unmar- 
ried girls  in  the  world — wherefore  the  flowerSo 
I  enclose  the  notes.  Keep  them, — they  may  be 
useful  for  a  book  some  day. 

I'm  having  a  pretty  good  rest,  and  am  still  in 
my  old  farmhouse. 

Love  to  al! 

XXXII 

December  15th,  1916. 

Dearest  All  : 

At  the  present  I'm  just  where  mother 
hoped  I'd  be — in  a  deep  dug-out  about  twenty 
feet  down — we're  trying  to  get  a  fire  lighted,  and 
consequently  the  place  is  smoked  out.  Where 
I'll  be  for  Christmas  I  don't  know,  but  I  hope 
by  then  to  be  in  billets.  I've  just  come  back  from 
the  trenches,  where  I've  been  observing.  The 
mud  is  not  nearly  so  bad  where  I  am  now,  and 
with  a  few  days'  more  work,  we  should  be  quite 
comfortable.  You'll  have  received  my  cable 
about  my  getting  leave  soon — I'm  wondering 
whether  the  Atlantic  is  sufficiently  quiet  for  any 
of  you  to  risk  a  crossing. 

Poor  Basil !     Your  letter  was  the  first  news  _ 
got  of  his  death.     I  must  have  watched  the  at- 


CARRY  ON  95 

tack  in  which  he  lost  his  life.  One  wonders  now 
how  it  was  that  some  instinct  did  not  warn  me 
that  one  of  those  khaki  dots  jumping  out  of  the 
trenches  was  the  cousin  who  stayed  with  us  in 
London. 

I'm  wondering  what  this  mystery  of  the  Ger- 
man Chancellor  is  all  about — some  peace  propo- 
sals, I  suppose — which  are  sure  to  prove  bom- 
bastic and  unacceptable.  It  seems  to  us  out  here 
as  though  the  war  must  go  on  forever.  Like 
a  boy's  dream  of  the  far-off  freedom  of  man- 
hood, the  day  appears  when  we  shall  step  out  into 
the  old  liberty  of  owning  our  own  lives.  What 
a  celebration  we'll  have  when  I  come  home!  I 
can't  quite  grasp  the  joy  of  it. 

I've  got  to  get  this  letter  off  quite  soon  if  it's 
to  go  to-day.  It  ought  to  reach  you  by  January 
1 2th  or  thereabouts.  You  may  be  sure  my 
thoughts  will  have  been  with  you  on  Christmas 
day.  I  shall  look  back  and  remember  all  the  by- 
gone good  times  and  then  plan  for  Christmas, 
1917.     God  keep  us  all. 

Ever  yours, 

Con. 


96  CARRY  ON 

XXXIII 

December  i8th,  191 6. 

My  Dearest  M.  : 

I  always  feel  when  I  write  a  joint  letter 
to  the  family  that  I'm  cheating  each  one  of  you, 
but  it's  so  very  difficult  to  get  time  to  write  as 
often  as  I'd  like.  It's  a  week  to  Christmas  and 
I  picture  the  beginnings  of  the  preparations.  I 
can  look  back  and  remember  so  many  such 
preparations,  especially  when  we  were  kiddies  in 
London.  What  good  times  one  has  in  a  life! 
I've  been  sitting  with  my  groom  by  the  fire  to- 
night while  he  dried  my  clothes.  I've  mentioned 
him  to  you  before  as  having  lived  in  Nelson,  and 
worked  at  the  Silver  King  mine.  We  both  grew 
ecstatic  over  British  Columbia. 

I  am  hoping  all  the  time  that  the  boys  may  be 
in  England  at  the  time  I  get  my  leave — I  hardly 
dare  hope  that  any  of  you  will  be  there.  But 
it  would  'le  grand  if  you  could  manage  it — I  long 
very  much  to  see  you  all  again,  I  can  just 
imagine  my  first  month  home  again.  I  shan't 
let  any  of  you  work.  I  shall  be  the  incurable 
boy.  I've  spent  the  best  part  of  to-day  out  in 
No  Man's  Land,  within  seventy  yards  of  the 
Huns.  Quite  an  experience,  I  assure  you,  and 
one  that  I  wouldn't  have  missed  for  worlds.     I'll 


CARRY  ON  97 

have  heaps  to  write  into  novels  one  day — the 
vividest  kind  of  local  colour.  Just  at  present  I 
have  nothing  to  read  but  the  Christmas  number 
of  the  Strand.  It  makes  me  remember  the  time 
when  we  children  raced  for  the  latest  develop- 
ment of  The  Hound  of  the  Baskervilles,  and  so 
many  occasions  when  I  had  one  of  "those  sniffy 
colds"  and  sat  by  the  Highbury  fire  with  a  book. 
Good  days,  those! 

I'm  just  off  to  bed  now,  and  will  finish  this  to- 
morrow.    Bed  is  my  greatest  luxury  nowadays. 

December  19th. 
The  book  and  chocolate  just  came,  and  a  bunch 
of  New  York  papers.  All  were  most  welcome. 
I  was  longing  for  something  to  read.  To-mor- 
row I  have  to  go  forward  to  observe.  Two  of 
our  officers  are  on  leave,  so  it  makes  the  rest  of 
us  work  pretty  hard.  What  do  you  think  of 
the  Kaiser's  absurd  peace  proposals?  The  man 
must  be  mad. 

The  best  of  love, 

Con. 

XXXIV 

December  20th,  1916. 
Dear  Mr.  T.  : 

Just  back  from  a  successful  argument  with 
Fritz,  to  find  your  kind  good  wishes.     It's  rather 


98  CARRY  ON 

a  lark  out  here,  though  a  lark  which  may  turn 
against  you  any  time.  I  laugh  a  good  deal  more 
than  I  mope.  Anything  really  horrible  has  a 
ludicrous  side — it's  like  Mark  Twain's  humour — 
a  gross  exaggeration.  The  maddest  thing  of  all 
to  me  is  that  a  person  so  willing  to  be  amiable 
as  I  am  should  be  out  here  killing  people  for 
principle's  sake.  There's  no  rhyme  or  reason — 
it  can't  be  argued.  Dimly  one  thinks  he  sees 
what  is  right  and  leaves  father  and  mother  and 
home,  as  though  it  were  for  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven's  sake.  Perhaps  it  is.  If  one  didn't  pin 
his  faith  to  that  "perhaps" .  One  can't  ex- 
plain. 

A  merry  Christmas  to  you. 

Yours  very  sincerely, 

CoNiNGSBY  Dawson. 


XXXV 

December  20th,  1916. 
Dear  Mr.  A.  D. : 

I've  just  come  in  from  an  argument  with 
Fritz  when  your  chocolate  formed  my  meal. 
You  were  very  kind  to  think  of  me  and  to  send 
it,  and  you  were  extraordinarily  understanding  in 
the  letter  that  you  sent  me.  One's  life  out  here 
is  like  a  pollarded  tree — all  the  lower  branches 


CARRY  ON  99 

are  gone — one  gazes  on  great  nobilities,  on  the 
fascinating  horror  of  Eternity  sometimes — I  said 
horror,  but  it's  often  fine  in  its  spaciousness — 
one  gazes  on  many  inverted  splendours  of  Titans, 
but  it's  giddy  work  being  so  high  and  rarefied, 
and  all  the  gentle  past  seems  gone.  That's  why 
it  is  pleasant  in  this  grimy  anonymity  of  death 
and  courage  to  get  reminders,  such  as  your  letter, 
that  one  was  once  localised  and  had  a  familiar 
history.  If  I  come  back,  I  shall  be  like  Rip  Van 
Winkle,  or  a  Robinson  Crusoe — like  any  and  all 
of  the  creatures  of  legend  and  history  to  whom 
abnormality  has  grown  to  seem  normal.  If  you 
can  imagine  yourself  living  in  a  world  in  which 
every  day  is  a  demonstration  of  a  Puritan's  con- 
ception of  what  happens  when  the  last  trump 
sounds,  then  you  have  some  idea  of  my  queer 
situation.  One  has  come  to  a  point  when  death 
seems  very  inconsiderable  and  only  failure  to 
do  one's  duty  is  an  utter  loss.  Love  and  the  fu- 
ture, and  all  the  sweet  and  tender  dreams  of  by- 
gone days  are  like  a  house  in  which  the  blinds 
are  lowered  and  from  which  the  sight  has  gone. 
Landscapes  have  lost  their  beauty,  everything 
God-made  and  man-made  is  destroyed,  except 
man's  power  to  endure  with  a  smile  the  things 
he  once  most  dreaded,  because  he  believes  that 
only  so  may  he  be  righteous  in  his  own  eyes. 


TOO  CARRY  ON 

How  one  has  longed  for  that  sure  confidence  in 
the  petty  failings  of  little  living — the  confidence 
to  believe  that  he  can  stand  up  and  suffer  for 
principle!  God  has  given  all  men  who  are  out 
here  that  opportunity — the  supremest  that  can  be 
hoped  for — so,  in  spite  of  exile,  Christmas  for 
most  of  us  will  be  a  happy  day.  Does  one  see 
more  truly  life's  worth  on  a  battlefield?  I  often 
ask  myself  that  question.  Is  the  contempt  that  is 
hourly  shown  for  life  the  real  standard  of  life's 
worth?  I  shrug  my  shoulders  at  my  own  un- 
answerable questions — all  I  know  is  that  I  move 
daily  with  men  who  have  everything  to  live  for 
who,  nevertheless,  are  urged  by  an  unconscious 
magnanimity  to  die.  I  don't  think  any  of  our 
dead  pity  themselves — but  they  would  have  done 
so  if  they  had  faltered  in  their  choice.  One  lives 
only  from  sunrise  to  sunrise,  but  there's  a  more 
real  happiness  in  this  brief  living  than  I  ever 
knew  before,  because  it  is  so  exactingly  worth 
while. 

Thank  you  again  for  your  kindness. 
Very  sincerely  yours, 

CD. 

The  suggestion  that  we  might  all  meet  in 
London  in  January,  19 17,  was  a  hope  rather 
than  an  expectation.     We  received  a  cable  from 


CARRY  ON  loi 

France  on  Sunday,  December  17th,  19 16,  and 
left  New  York  on  December  30th.  We  were  met 
in  London  by  the  two  sailor-sons,  who  were  ex- 
pecting appointments  at  any  moment,  and  Con- 
ingsby  arrived  late  in  the  evening  of  January 
13th.  He  was  unwell  when  he  arrived,  having 
had  a  near  touch  of  pneumonia.  The  day  be- 
fore he  left  the  front  he  had  been  in  action,  with 
a  temperature  of  104.  There  were  difficulties 
about  getting  his  leave  at  the  exact  time  ap- 
pointed, but  these  he  overcame  by  exchanging 
leave  with  a  brother-officer.  He  travelled  from 
the  Front  all  night  in  a  windowless  train,  and 
at  Calais  was  delayed  by  a  draft  of  infantry 
which  he  had  to  take  over  to  England.  The  con- 
sequence of  this  delay  was  that  the  meeting  at 
the  railway  station,  of  which  he  had  so  long 
dreamed,  did  not  come  off.  We  spent  a  long 
day,  going  from  station  to  station,  misled  by  im- 
perfect information  as  to  the  arrival  of  troop 
trains.  At  Victoria  Station  we  saw  two  thou- 
sand troops  arrive  on  leave,  men  caked  with 
trench-mud,  but  he  was  not  among  them.  We 
reluctantly  returned  to  our  hotel  in  the  late  after- 
noon and  gave  up  expecting  him.  There  was  all 
the  time  a  telegram  at  the  hotel  from  him,  giving 
the  exact  place  and  time  of  his  arrival,  but  it 
was  not  delivered  until  it  was  too  late  to  meet 


102  CARRY  ON 

him.  He  arrived  at  ten  o'clock,  and  at  the  same 
time  his  two  brothers,  who  had  been  summoned 
in  the  morning  to  Southampton,  entered  the  hotel, 
having  been  granted  special  leave  to  return  to 
London.  A  night's  rest  did  wonders  for  Con- 
ingsby,  and  the  next  day  his  spirits  were  as  high 
as  in  the  old  days  of  joyous  holiday.  During 
the  next  eight  days  we  lived  at  a  tense  pitch  of 
excitement.  We  went  to  theatres,  dined  in  res- 
taurants, met  friends,  and  heard  from  his  lips  a 
hundred  details  of  his  life  which  could  not  be 
communicated  in  letters.  We  were  all  thrilled 
by  the  darkened  heroic  London  through  which 
we  moved,  the  London  which  bore  its  sorrows 
so  proudly,  and  went  about  its  daily  life  with 
such  silent  courage.  We  visited  old  friends  to 
whom  the  war  had  brought  irreparable  bereave- 
ments, but  never  once  heard  the  voice  of  self- 
pity,  of  murmur  or  complaint.  To  me  it  was 
an  incredible  England ;  an  England  purged  of  all 
weakness,  stripped  of  flabbiness,  regenerated  by 
sacrifice.  I  had  dreamed  of  no  such  transforma- 
tion by  anything  I  had  read  in  American  news- 
papers and  magazines.  I  think  no  one  can 
imagine  the  completeness  of  this  rebirth  of  the 
soul  of  England  who  has  not  dwelt,  if  only  for 
a  few  days,  among  its  people. 

Coningsby's  brief  leave  expired  all  too  soon. 


CARRY  ON  103 

We  saw  him  off  from  Folkestone,  and  while 
we  were  saying  good-bye  to  him,  his  two  brothers 
were  on  their  way  to  their  distant  appointments 
with  the  Royal  Naval  Motor  Patrol  in  the  North 
of  Scotland.  We  left  Liverpool  for  New  York 
on  January  27th,  and  while  at  sea  heard  of  the 
diplomatic  break  between  America  and  Germany. 
The  news  was  received  on  board  the  S.  S.  St 
Paul  with  rejoicing.  It  was  Sunday,  and  the  re- 
ligious service  on  board  concluded  with  the  Star- 
Spangled  Banner. 

XXXVI 

December  28th,  1916. 

Dearest  All: 

I'm  writing  you  this  letter  because  I  ex- 
pect to-night  is  a  busy-packing  one  with  you. 
The  picture  is  in  my  mind  of  you  all.  How 
splendid  it  is  of  you  to  come!  I  never  thought 
you  would  really,  not  even  in  my  wildest  dream 
of  optimism.  There  have  been  so  many  times 
when  I  scarcely  thought  that  I  would  ever  see 
you  again — now  the  unexpected  and  hoped-for 
happens.     It's  ripping! 

I've  put  in  an  application  for  special  leave  in 
case  the  ordinary  leave  should  be  cut  off.  I  think 
I'm  almost  certain  to  arrive  by  the  nth.  Won't 
we  have  a  time?     I  wonder  what  we'll  want  to 


104  CARRY  ON 

do  most — sit  quiet  or  go  to  theatres?  The  nine 
days  of  freedom — the  wonderful  nine  days — will 
pass  with  most  tragic  quickness.  But  they'll  be 
days  to  remember  as  long  as  life  lasts. 

Shall  I  see  you  standing  on  the  station  when 
I  puff  into  London — or  will  it  be  Folkestone 
where  we  meet — or  shall  I  arrive  before  you? 
I  somehow  think  it  will  be  you  who  will  meet  me 
at  the  barrier  at  Charing  Cross,  and  we'll  taxi 
through  the  darkened  streets  down  the  Strand, 
and  back  to  our  privacy.  How  impossible  it 
sounds — like  a  vision  of  heart's  desire  in  the 
night. 

Far,  far  away  I  see  the  fine  home-coming,  like 
a  lamp  burning  in  a  dark  night.  I  expect  we 
shall  all  go  oflf  our  heads  with  joy  and  be  madder 
than  ever.  Who  in  the  old  London  days  would 
have  imagined  such  a  nine  days  of  happiness  in 
the  old  places  as  we  are  to  have  together. 
God  bless  you,  till  we  meet, 

Con. 

XXXVII 

January  4th,  1917. 
10.30  p.m. 

My  Dearest  Ones: 

This  letter  is  written  to  welcome  you  to 
England,  but  I  may  be  with  you  when  it  is  opened. 


CARRY  ON  105 

It  was  glorious  news  to  hear  that  you  were  com- 
ing— I  was  only  playing  a  forlorn  bluff  when  I 
sent  those  cables.  You're  on  the  sea  at  present 
and  should  be  half  way  over.  Our  last  trip 
over  together  you  marvelled  at  the  apparent  in- 
difference of  the  soldiers  on  board,  and  now 
you're  coming  to  meet  one  of  your  own  fresh 
from  the  Front.     A  change ! 

O  what  a  nine  days  we're  going  to  have  to- 
gether— the  most  wonderful  that  were  ever  spent. 
I  dream  of  them,  tell  myself  tales  about  them, 
live  them  over  many  times  in  imagination  be- 
fore they  are  realised.  Sometimes  I'm  going  to 
have  no  end  of  sleep,  sometimes  I'm  going  to 
keep  awake  every  second,  sometimes  I'm  going 
to  sit  quietly  by  a  fire,  and  sometimes  I'm  going 
to  taxi  all  the  time.  I  can't  fit  your  faces  into 
the  picture — it  seems  too  unbelievable  that  we 
are  to  be  together  once  again.  To-day  I've  been 
staging  our  meeting — if  you  arrive  first,  and  then 
if  I  arrive  before  you,  and  lastly  if  we  both  hit 
London  on  the  same  day.  You  mustn't  expect 
me  to  be  a  sane  person.  You're  three  rippers  to 
do  this — and  I  hope  you'll  have  an  easy  journey. 
The  only  ghost  is  the  last  day,  when  the  leave 
train  pulls  out  of  Charing  Cross.  But  we'll  do 
that  smiling,  too ;  C'est  la  guerre. 

Yours  always  and  ever,  Con. 


io6  CARRY  ON 

XXXVIII 

January  6th,  1917. 
My  Dear  Ones: 

I  have  just  seen  a  brother  officer  aboard 
the  ex-London  bus  en  route  for  Blighty.  How 
I  wished  I  could  have  stepped  on  board  that  ex- 
London  perambulator  to-night!  "Pickerdilly 
Cirkuss,  'Ighbury,  'Ighgate,  Welsh  'Arp — all  the 
wye."  O  my,  what  a  time  I'll  have  when  I 
meet  you!  I  shall  feel  as  though  if  anything 
happens  to  me  after  my  return  you'll  be  able  to 
understand  so  much  more  bravely.  These  blink- 
ered letters,  with  only  writing  and  no  touch  of 
live  hands,  convey  so  little.  When  we've  had  a 
good  time  together  and  sat  round  the  fire  and 
talked  interminably  you'll  be  able  to  read  sd 
much  more  between  the  lines  of  my  future  let- 
ters. To-morrow  you  ought  to  land  in  England, 
and  to-morrow  night  you  should  sleep  in  London. 
I  am  trying  to  swop  my  leave  with  another  man, 
otherwise  it  won't  come  till  the  1 5th.  I  am  look- 
ing forward  every  hour  to  those  miraculous  nine 
days  which  we  are  to  have  together.  You  can't 
imagine  with  your  vividest  imagination  the  con- 
trast between  nine  days  with  you  in  London  and 
my  days  where  I  am  now.  A  battalion  went  by 
yesterday,  marching  into  action,  and  its  band  wa? 


CARRY  ON  107 

playing  I've  a  Sneakin'  Feelin'  in  My  Heart 
That  I  Want  to  Settle  Down.  We  all  have  that 
sneaking  feeling  from  time  to  time.  I  tell  myself 
wonderful  stories  in  the  early  dark  mornings  and 
become  the  architect  of  the  most  wonderful  fu- 
tures. 

I'm  coming  to  join  you  just  as  soon  as  I 
know  hov/ — at  the  worst  I'll  be  in  London  on  the 
1 6th  of  this  month. 

Ever  yours, 

Con. 

The  foUozving  letters  were  written  after  Con- 
ingsby  had  met  his  family  in  London. 


XXXIX 

January  24th,  19 17. 

My  Dear  Ones  : 

I  have  had  a  chance  to  write  you  sooner 
than  I  expected,  as  I  stopped  the  night  where  I 
disembarked,  and  am  catching  my  train  to-day. 

It's  strange  to  be  back  and  under  orders  after 
nine  days'  freedom.  Directly  I  landed  I  was  de- 
tailed to  march  a  party — it  was  that  that  made  me 
lose  my  train — not  that  I  objected,  for  I  got  one 
more  sleep  between  sheets.  I  picked  up  on  the 
boat  in  the  casual  way  one  does,  with  three  other 


io8  CARRY  ON 

officers,  so  on  landing  we  made  a  party  to  dine 
together,  and  had  a  very  decent  evening.  I 
wasn't  wanting  to  remember  too  much  then,  so 
that  was  why  I  didn't  write  letters. 

What  good  times  we  have  to  look  back  on 
and  how  much  to  be  thankful  for,  that  we  met 
altogether.  Now  we  must  look  forward  to  the 
summer  and,  perhaps,  the  end  of  the  war.  What 
a  mad  joy  will  sweep  across  the  world  on  the 
day  that  peace  is  declared  \ 

This  visit  will  have  made  you  feel  that  you 
have  a  share  in  all  that's  happening  over  here 
and  are  as  real  a  part  of  it  as  any  of  us.     I'm 
Awfully  proud  of  you  for  your  courage. 
Yours  lovingly, 

Con. 

XL 

January  26th,  igi?- 

My  Very  Dear  Ones  : 

Here  I  am  back — my  nine  days'  leave  a 
dream.  I  got  into  our  wagon-lines  last  night 
after  midnight,  having  had  a  cold  ride  along 
frozen  roads  through  white  wintry  country.  I 
was  only  half -expected,  so  my  sleeping-bag  hadn't 
been  unpacked.  I  had  to  wake  my  batman  and 
tramp  about  a  mile  to  the  billet;  by  the  time  I 
got  there  every  one  was  asleep,  so  I  spread  out 


CARRY  ON  109 

my  sleeping-sack  and  crept  in  very  quietly.  For 
the  few  minutes  before  my  eyes  closed  I  pic- 
tured London,  the  taxis,  the  gay  parties,  the  mys- 
tery of  lights.  I  was  roused  this  morning  with 
the  news  that  I  had  to  go  up  to  the  gun-position 
at  once.  I  stole  just  sufficient  time  to  pick  up  a 
part  of  my  accumulated  mail,  then  got  on  my 
horse  and  set  out.  At  the  guns,  I  found  that  I 
was  due  to  report  as  liaison  officer,  so  here  I  am 
in  the  trenches  again  writing  to  you  by  candle- 
light. How  wonderfully  we  have  bridged  the 
distance  in  spending  those  nine  whole  da,ys  to- 
gether. And  now  it  is  over,  and  I  am  back  in  the 
trenches,  and  to-morrow  you're  sailing  for  New 
York. 

I  can't  tell  you  what  the  respite  has  meant  to 
me.  There  have  been  times  when  my  whole  past 
life  has  seemed  a  myth  and  the  future  an  endless 
prospect  of  carrying  on.  Now  I  can  distantly 
hope  that  the  old  days  will  return. 

When  I  was  in  London  half  my  mind  was  at 
the  Front ;  now  that  I'm  back  in  the  trenches  half 
my  mind  is  in  London.  I  re-live  our  gay  times 
together;  I  go  to  cosy  little  dinners;  I  sit  with 
you  in  the  stalls,  listening  to  the  music;  then  I 
tumble  off  to  sleep,  and  dream,  and  wake  up  to 
find  the    dream    a    delusion.     It's    a    fine  and 


no  CARRY  ON 

manly  contrast,  however,  between  the  g^me  one 
plays  out  here  and  the  fretful  trivialities  of 
civilian  life. 

XLI 

January  27th. 

I  got  as  far  as  this  and  then  "something"  hap- 
pened. Twenty-four  hours  have  gone  by  and 
once  more  it's  nearly  midnight  and  I  write  to  you 
by  candle-light.  Since  last  night  I've  been  with 
these  infantry  boy-officers  who  are  doing  such 
great  work  in  such  a  careless  spirit  of  jolliness. 
Any  softness  which  had  crept  into  me  during  my 
nine  days  of  happiness  has  gone.  I'm  glad  to  be 
out  here  and  wouldn't  wish  to  be  anywhere  else 
till  the  war  is  ended. 

It's  a  week  to-day  since  we  were  at  Charlie's 
Aunt — such  a  cheerful  little  party !  I  expect  the 
boys  are  doing  their  share  of  remembering  too 
somewhere  on  the  sea  at  present.  I  know  you 
are,  as  you  round  the  coast  of  Ireland  and  set 
out  for  the  Atlantic. 

I've  not  been  out  of  my  clothes  for  three  days 
and  I've  another  day  to  go  yet.  I  brought  my 
haversack  into  the  trenches  with  me;  on  open= 
ing  it  I  found  that  some  kind  hands  had  slipped 
into  it  some  clean  socks  and  a  bottle  of  Horiick's 
Malted  Milk  tablets. 


CARRY  ON  III 

The  signallers  in  a  near-by  dng-out  are  sing- 
ing Keep  the  Home-Fires  Burning  Till  the  Boys 
Come  Home.  That's  what  we're  all  doing-, 
isn't  it — you  at  your  end  and  we  at  ours?  The 
brief  few  days  of  possessing  myself  are  over  and 
once  more  stern  duty  lies  ahead.  But  I  thank  God 
for  the  chance  I've  had  to  see  again  those  whom 
I  love,  and  to  be  able  to  tell  them  with  my  own 
lips  some  of  the  bigness  of  our  life  at  the  Front. 
No  personal  aims  count  beside  the  great  privilege 
which  is  ours  to  carry  on  until  the  war  is  over. 

All  my  thoughts  are  with  you — so  many  memo- 
ries of  kindness.  I  keep  on  picturing  things  I 
ought  to  have  done — things  I  ought  to  have 
told  you.  Always  I  can  see,  Oh,  so  vividly, 
the  two  sailor  brothers  waving  good-bye  as 
the  train  moved  off  through  the  London  dusk, 
and  then  that  other  and  forlorner  group  of 
three,  standing  outside  the  dock  gates  with 
the  sentry  like  the  angel  in  Eden,  turning  them 
back  from  happiness.  With  an  extraordinary 
aloofness  I  watched  myself  moving  like  a  pup- 
pet away  from  you  whom  I  love  most  dearly 
in  all  the  world — going  away  as  if  going  were  a 
thing  so  usual. 

I'm  asking  myself  again  if  there  isn't  some 
new  fineness  of  spirit  which  will  develop  from 
thv"  war  and  survive  it.     In  London,  at  a  dis- 


112  CARRY  ON 

tance  from  all  this  tragedy  of  courage,  I  felt  that 
I  had  slipped  back  to  a  lower  plane;  a  kind  of 
flabbiness  was  creeping  into  my  blood — the  old 
selfish  fear  of  life  and  love  of  comfort.  It's  odd 
tliat  out  here,  where  the  fear  of  death  should 
supplant  the  fear  of  life,  one  somehow  rises  into 
a  contempt  for  everything  which  is  not  bravest. 
There's  no  doubt  that  the  call  for  sacrifice,  and 
perhaps  the  supreme  sacrifice,  can  transform  men 
into  a  nobility  of  which  they  themselves  are  un- 
conscious. That's  the  most  splendid  thing  of 
all,  that  they  themselves  are  unaware  of  their 
fineness. 

I'm  now  waiting  to  be  relieved  and  am  hurry- 
ing to  finish  this  so  that  I  may  mail  it  as  soon 
as  I  get  back  to  the  battery.  There's  a  whole 
sack  of  letters  and  parcels  waiting  for  me  there, 
and  I'm  as  eager  to  get  to  them  as  a  kiddy  to 
inspect  his  Christmas  stocking.  I  always  undo 
the  string  and  wrappings  with  a  kind  of  rever- 
ence, trying  to  picture  the  dear  kneeling  figures 
who  did  them  up.  In  London  I  didn't  dare  to 
let  myself  go  with  you — I  couldn't  say  all  that 
was  in  my  heart — it  wouldn't  have  been  wise. 
Don't  ever  doubt  that  the  tenderness  was  there. 
Even  though  one  is  only  a  civilian  in  khaki,  some 
of  the  soldier's  sternness  becomes  second  nature. 

All  the  country  is  covered  with  snow — it's  bril- 


CARRY  ON  113 

Uiivst  clear  weather,  more  like  America  than 
Europe.  I'm  feeling  strong  as  a  horse,  ever  so 
much  better  than  I  felt  when  on  leave.  Life  is 
really  tremendously  worth  living,  in  spite  of  the 
war. 

XLII 

January  28th. 
I'm  back  at  the  battery,  sitting  by  a  cosy  fire. 
I  might  be  up  at  Kootenay  by  the  look  of  my 
surroundings.  I'm  in  a  shack  with  a  really  truly 
floor,  and  a  window  looking  out  on  moonlit  white- 
ness. If  it  wasn't  for  the  tapping  of  the  distant 
machine  guns — tapping  that  always  sounds  to  me 
like  the  nailing  up  of  coffins — I  might  be  here 
for  pleasure.  In  imagination  I  can  see  your 
great  ship,  with  all  its  portholes  aglare,  plough- 
ing across  the  darkness  to  America.  The  dear 
sailor  brothers  I  can't  quite  visualise;  I  can  only 
see  them  looking  so  upright  and  pale  when  we 
said  good-bye.  It's  getting  late  and  the  fire's 
dying.  I'm  half  asleep;  I've  not  been  out  of  my 
clothes  for  three  nights.  I  shall  tell  myself  a 
story  of  the  end  of  the  war  and  our  next  meet- 
ing — it'll  last  from  the  time  that  I  creep  into  my 
sack  until  I  close  my  eyes.  It's  a  glorious  life. 
Yours  very  lovingly, 

Con 


114  CARRY  ON 

XLIII 

January  31st,  1917. 

Dear  Mr.  and  Mrs.  M.  : 

It  was  extremely  good  of  you  to  remem- 
ber me.  I  got  back  from  leave  in  London  on 
the  26th  and  found  the  cigarettes  waiting  for 
me.  One  hasn't  got  an  awful  lot  of  pleasures 
left,  but  smoking  is  one  of  them.  I  feel  par- 
ticularly doggy  when  I  open  my  case  and  find 
my  initials  on  them, 

I  expect  you'll  have  heard  all  the  news  of  my 
leave  long  before  this  reaches  you.  We  had  a 
splendid  time  and  the  greatest  of  luck.  My 
sailor  brothers  were  with  me  all  but  two  days, 
and  my  people  were  in  England  only  a  few  days 
before  I  arrived. 

This  is  a  queer  adventure  for  a  peaceable  per- 
son like  myself — it  blots  out  all  the  past  and  re- 
duces the  future  to  a  speck.  One  hardly  hopes 
that  things  will  ever  be  different,  but  looks  for- 
ward to  interminable  years  of  carrying  on.  My 
leave  rather  corrected  that  frame  of  mind ;  it  came 
as  a  surprise  to  be  forced  to  realise  that  not  all 
the  world  was  living  under  orders  on  woman- 
less,  childless  battlefields.  But  we  don't  need 
any  pity — we  manage  our  good  times,  and  are 
sorry  for  the  men  who  aren't  here,   for  it's  a 


CARRY  ON  115 

wonderful  thing  to  have  been  chosen  to  sacrifice 
and  perhaps  to  die  that  the  world  of  the  future 
may  be  happier  and  kinder. 

This  letter  is  rather  disjointed;  I'm  in  cnarge 
of  the  battery  for  the  time,  and  messages  keep 
on  coming  in,  and  one  has  to  rush  out  to  give 
the  order  to  fire. 

It's  an  American  night — snow-white  and  pierc- 
ing, with  a  frigid  moon  sailing  quietly.  I  think 
the  quiet  beauty  of  the  sky  is  about  the  only 
thing  in  Nature  that  we  do  not  scar  and  destroy 
with  our  fighting. 

Good-bye,  and  thank  you  ever  so  much. 
Yours  very  sincerely, 

CoNiNGSBY  Dawson. 


XLIV 

February  ist,  1917. 
II  p.m. 

Dear  Father: 

Your  picture  of  the  black  days  when  no 
letter  comes  from  me  sets  me  off  scribbling  to 
you  at  this  late  hour.  All  to-day  I've  been  hav- 
ing a  cold  but  amusing  time  at  the  O.  P.  (For- 
ward Observation  Post).  It  seems  brutal  to  say 
it,  but  taking  potshots  at  the  enemy  when  they 
present   themselves   is   rather    fun.     When   you 


ii6  CARRY  ON 

watch  them  scattering  Hke  ants  before  the  shell 
vhose  direction  you  have  ordered,  you  somehow 
(orget  to  think  of  them  as  individuals,  any  more 
than  the  bear-hunter  thinks  of  the  cubs  that  will 
be  left  motherless.  You  watch  your  victims 
through  your  glasses  as  God  might  watch  his 
mad  universe.  Your  skill  in  directing  fire  makes 
you  what  in  peace  times  would  be  called  a  mur- 
derer. Curious!  You're  glad,  and  yet  at  close 
quarters  only  in  hot  blood  would  you  hurt  a  man. 
I'd  been  back  for  a  little  over  an  hour  when 
I  had  to  go  forward  again  to  guide  in  some  gun?. 
The  country  was  dazzlingly  white  in  the  moon- 
light. As  far  as  eye  could  see  every  yard  was 
an  old  battlefield;  beneath  the  soft  white  fleece 
of  snow  lay  countless  unburied  bodies.  Like 
frantic  fingers  tearing  at  the  sky,  all  along  the 
horizon,  Hun  lights  were  shooting  up  and  drifting 
across  our  front.  Tap-tap-tappitj  went  the  ma- 
chine-guns; whoo-oo  went  the  heavies,  and  they 
always  stamp  like  angry  bulls.  I  had  to  come 
back  by  myself  across  the  heroic  corruption  which 
the  snow  had  covered.  All  the  way  I  asked  my- 
self why  was  I  not  frightened.  What  has  hap- 
pened to  me?  Ghosts  should  walk  here  if  any- 
where. Moreover,  I  know  that  I  shall  be  fright- 
ened again  when  the  war  is  ended.  Do  you  re- 
member how  you  once  offered  me  money  to  walk 


CARRY  ON  117 

through  the  Forest  of  Dean  after  dark,  and  I 
wouldn't?  I  wouldn't  if  you  offered  it  to  me 
now.  You  remember  Meredith's  lines  in  *'The 
Woods  of  Westermain" : 

"All  the  eyeballs  under  hoods 
Shroud  you  in  their  glare ; 
Enter  these  enchanted  woods 
You  who  dare." 

Maybe  what  re-creates  one  for  the  moment  is  the 
British  officer's  unifonn,  and  even  more  the  fact 
that  you  are  not  asked,  but  expected,  to  do  your 
duty.  So  I  came  back  quite  unruffled  across  bat- 
tered trenches  and  silent  mounds  to  write  this 
letter  to  you. 

My  dear  father,  I'm  over  thirty,  and  yet  just 
as  much  a  little  boy  as  ever.  I  still  feel  over- 
whelmingly dependent  on  your  good  opinion  and 
love.  I'm  glad  that  they  are  black  days  when 
you  have  no  letters  from  me.  I  love  to  think 
of  the  rush  to  the  door  when  the  postman  rings 
and  the  excited  shouting  up  the  stairs,  *'Quick, 
one  from  Con." 

February  2nd. 

You  see  by  the  writing  how  tired  I  was  when 
I  reached  this  point.  It's  nearly  twenty- four 
hours  later  and  again  night.  The  gramophone  is 
playing  an  air  from  La  Tosca  to  which  the  guns 


ii8  CARRY  ON 

beat  out  a  bass  accompaniment.  I  close  my  eyes 
and  picture  the  many  times  I  have  heard  the 
(probably)  German  orchestras  of  Broadway  Joy 
Palaces  play  that  same  music.  How  incongru- 
ous that  I  should  be  listening  to  it  here  and  un- 
der these  circumstances!  It  must  have  been 
listened  to  so  often  by  gay  crowds  in  the  beauty 
places  of  the  world.  A  romantic  picture  grows 
up  in  my  mind  of  a  blue  night,  the  laughter  of , 
youth  in  evening  dress,  lamps  twinkling  through 
trees,  far  off  the  velvety  shadow  of  water  and 
mountains,  and  as  a  voice  to  it  all,  that  air  from 
La  Tosca.  I  can  believe  that  the  silent  people 
near  by  raise  themselves  up  in  their  snow-beds 
to  listen,  each  one  recalling  some  ecstatic  mo- 
ment before  the  dream  of  life  was  shattered. 

There's  a  picture  in  the  Pantheon  at  Paris,  I 
remember;  I  believe  it's  called  To  Glory.  One 
sees  all  the  armies  of  the  ages  charging  out  of 
the  middle  distance  with  Death  riding  at  their 
head.  The  only  glory  that  I  have  discovered  in 
this  war  is  in  men's  hearts — it's  not  external. 
Were  one  to  paint  the  spirit  of  this  war  he  would 
depict  a  mud  landscape,  blasted  trees,  an  iron  sky; 
wading  through  the  slush  and  shell-holes  would 
come  a  file  of  bowed  figures,  more  like  outcasts 
from  the  Embankment  than  soldiers.  They're 
loaded  down  like  pack  animals,  their  shoulders 


CARRY  ON  119 

are  rounded,  they're  wearied  to  death,  but  they 
go  on  and  go  on.  There's  no  "To  Glory"  about 
what  we're  doing  out  here;  there's  no  flash  of 
swords  or  splendour  of  uniforms.  There  are 
only  very  tired  men  determined  to  carry  on.  The 
war  will  be  won  by  tired  men  who  could  never 
again  pass  an  insurance  test,  a  mob  of  broken 
counter-jumpers,  ragged  ex-plumbers  and  quite 
unheroic  persons.  We're  civilians  in  khaki,  but 
because  of  the  ideals  for  which  we  fight  we've 
managed  to  acquire  soldiers'  hearts. 

My  flow  of  thought  was  interrupted  by  a  burst 
of  song  in  which  I  was  compelled  to  join.  We're 
all  writing  letters  around  one  candle;  suddenly 
the  O.  C.  looked  up  and  began,  God  Be  With 
You  Till  We  Meet  Again.  We  sang  it  in  parts. 
It  was  in  Southport,  when  I  was  about  nine  years 
old,  that  I  first  heard  that  sung.  You  had  gone 
for  your  first  trip  to  America,  leaving  a  very 
lonely  family  behind  you.  We  children  were 
scared  to  death  that  you'd  be  drowned.  One  eve- 
ning, coming  back  from  a  walk  on  the  sand-hills, 
we  heard  voices  singing  in  a  garden,  God  Be 
With  You  Till  We  Meet  Again.  The  words  and 
the  soft  dusk,  and  the  vague  figures  in  the  English 
summer  garden,  seemed  to  typify  the  terror  of 
all  partings.  We've  said  good-bye  so  often  since, 
and  God  has  been  with  us.     I  don't  think  any 


I20  CARRY  ON 

parting  was  more  hard  than  our  last  at  the  pro> 
saic  dock-gates  with  the  cold  wind  of  duty  blow- 
ing, and  the  sentry  barring  your  entrance,  and 
your  path  leading  back  to  America  while  mine 
led  on  to  France.  But  you  three  were  regular 
soldiers — just  as  much  soldiers  as  we  chaps  who 
were  embarking.  One  talks  of  our  armies  in 
the  field,  but  there  are  the  other  armies,  mil- 
lions strong,  of  mothers  and  fathers  and  sisters, 
who  keep  their  eyes  dry,  treasure  muddy  letters 
beneath  their  pillows,  offer  up  prayers  and  wait, 
wait,  wait  so  eternally  for  God  to  open  another 
door. 

To-morrow  I  again  go  forward,  which  means 
rising  early  and  taking  a  long  plod  through  the 
snows;  that's  one  reason  for  not  writing  any 
more,  and  another  is  that  our  one  poor  candle 
is  literally  on  its  last  legs. 

Your  poem,  written  years  ago  when  the  poor 
were  marching  in  London,  is  often  in  my  mind : 

"Yesterday  and  to-day 

Have  been  heavy  with  labour  and  sorrow; 
I  should  faint  if  I  did  not  see 

The  day  that  is  after  to-morrow." 

And  there's  that  last  verse  which  prophesied  ut- 
terly the  spirit  in  which  we  men  at  the  Front  are 
fighting  to-day: 


CARRY  ON  121 

"And  for  me,  with  spirit  elate 

The  mire  and  the  fog  I  press  thorough. 
For  Heaven  shines  mider  the  cloud 
Of  the  day  that  is  after  to-morrow." 

We  civilians  who  have  been  taught  so  long  to 
love  our  enemies  and  do  good  to  them  who  hate 
us — much  too  long  ever  to  make  professional 
soldiers — are  watching  with  our  hearts  in  our 
eyes  for  that  day  which  comes  after  to-morrow. 
Meanwhile  we  plod  on  determinedly,  hoping  for 
the  hidden  glory. 

Yours  very  lovingly, 

Con. 

XLV 

February  3rd,  1917. 

Dear  Misses  W.  : 

You  were  very  kind  to  remember  me  at 
Christmas.  Seventeen  was  read  with  all  kinds 
of  gusto  by  all  my  brother  officers.  It's  still  be- 
ing borrowed. 

I've  been  back  from  leave  a  few  days  now  and 
am  settling  back  to  business  again.  It  was  a 
trifle  hard  after  over-eating  and  undersleeping 
myself  for  nine  days,  and  riding  everywhere  with 
my  feet  up  in  taxis.  I  was  the  wildest  little  boy. 
Here  it's  snowy  and  bitter.  We  wear  scarves 
round  our  ears  to  keep  the  frost  away  and  dream 


122  CARRY  ON 

of  fires  a  mile  high.  All  I  ask,  when  the  war  is 
ended,  is  to  be  allowed  to  sit  asleep  in  a  big  arm- 
chair and  to  be  left  there  absolutely  quiet.  Sleep, 
which  we  crave  so  much  at  times,  is  only  death 
done  up  in  sample  bottles.  Perhaps  some  of 
these  very  weary  men  who  strew  our  battlefields 
are  glad  to  lie  at  last  at  endless  leisure. 
Good-bye,  and  thank  you. 

Yours  very  sincerely, 

Con. 

XLVI 

February  4th,  1917. 
My  Dearest  Mother: 

Somewhere  in  the  distance  I  can  hear  a 
piano  going  and  men's  voices  singing  A  Perfect 
Day.  It's  queer  how  music  creates  a  world 
for  you  in  which  you  are  not,  and  makes  you 
dreamy,  I've  been  sitting  by  a  fire  and  think- 
ing of  all  the  happy  times  when  the  total  of  de- 
sire seemed  almost  within  one's  grasp.  It  never 
is — one  always,  always  misses  it  and  has  to  rub 
the  dust  from  the  eyes,  recover  one's  breath  and 
set  out  on  the  search  afresh.  I  suppose  when 
you  grow  very  old  you  learn  the  lesson  of  sitting 
quiet,  and  the  heart  stops  beating  and  the  total 
of  desire  comes  to  you.  And  yet  I  can  remem- 
ber so  many  happy  days,  when  I  was  a  child  in 


CARRY  ON  123 

the  summer  and  later  at  Kootenay.  One  almost 
thought  he  had  caught  the  secret  of  carrying 
heaven  in  his  heart. 

By  the  time  this  reaches  you  I'll  be  in  the  line 
again,  but  for  the  present  I'm  undergoing  a  spe- 
cial course  of  training.  You  can't  hear  the  most 
distant  sound  of  guns,  and  if  it  wasn't  for  the 
pressure  of  study,  similar  to  that  at  Kingston, 
one  would  be  very  rested. 

Sunday  of  all  days  is  the  one  when  I  remem- 
ber you  most.  You're  just  sitting  down  to  mid- 
day dinner, — I've  made  the  calculation  for  dif- 
ference of  time.  You're  probably  saying  how 
less  than  a  month  ago  we  were  in  London,  That 
doesn't  sound  true  even  when  I  write  it.  I  won- 
der how  your  old  familiar  surroundings  strike 
you.  It's  terrible  to  come  down  from  the  moun- 
tain heights  of  a  great  elation  like  our  ten  days 
in  London.  I  often  think  of  that  with  regard  to 
myself  when  the  war  is  ended.  There'll  be  a 
sense  of  dissatisfaction  when  the  old  lost  com- 
forts are  regained.  There'll  be  a  sense  of  low- 
ered manhood.  The  stupendous  terrors  of  Ar- 
mageddon demand  less  courage  than  the  unevent- 
ful terror  of  the  daily  commonplace.  There's 
something  splendid  and  exhilarating  in  going  for- 
ward among  bursting  shells — we,  who  have  done 
all  that,  know  that  when  the  guns  have  ceased  to 


124  CARRY  ON 

roar  our  blood  will  grow  more  sluggish  and  we'll 
never  be  such  men  again.  Instead  of  getting  up 
in  the  morning  and  hearing  your  O.  C.  say, 
"You'll  run  a  line  into  trench  so-and-so  to-day 
and  shoot  up  such-and-such  Hun  wire,"  you'll 
hear  necessity  saying,  "You'll  v/ork  from  break- 
fast to  dinner  and  earn  your  daily  bread.  And 
you'll  do  it  to-morrow  and  to-morrow  and  to- 
morrow world  without  end.  Amen."  They 
never  put  that  forever  and  forever  part  into  their 
commands  out  here,  because  the  Amen  for  any 
one  of  us  may  be  only  a  few  hours  away.  But 
the  big  immediate  thing  is  so  much  easier  to  do 
than  the  prosaic  carrying  on  without  anxiety — 
which  is  your  game.  I  begin  to  understand  what 
you  have  had  to  suffer  now  that  R.  and  E. 
are  really  at  war  too.  I  get  awfully  anxious 
about  them.  I  never  knew  before  that  either  of 
them  owned  so  much  of  my  heart.  1  get  furious 
when  I  remember  that  they  might  get  hurt. 
I've  heard  of  a  Canadian  v/ho  joined  when  he 
learnt  that  his  best  friend  had  been  murdered 
by  Hun  bayonets.  He  came  to  get  his  own  back 
and  was  the  most  reckless  man  in  his  battalion. 
I  can  understand  his  temper  now.  We're  all  of 
us  in  danger  of  slipping  back  into  the  worship 
of  Thor. 

I'll  write  as  often  as  I  can  while  here,  but  I 


CARRY  ON  125 

don't  get  much  time — so  you'll  understand.  It's 
the  long  nights  when  one  sits  up  to  take  the  firing 
in  action  that  give  one  the  chance  to  be  a  decent 
correspondent. 

My  birthday  comes  round  soon,  doesn't  it? 
Good  heavens,  how  ancient  I'm  getting  and  with- 
out any  "grow  old  along  with  me"  consolation. 
Well,  to  grow  old  is  all  in  the  job  of  living. 

Good-bye,  and  God  bless  you  all. 
Yours  ever, 

Con. 

XLVII 

February  4th,  191 7. 

Dear  Mr.  B,  : 

I  have  been  intending  to  write  to  you  for 
a  very  long  time,  but  as  most  of  one's  writing 
is  done  when  one  ought  to  be  asleep,  and  sleep 
next  to  eating  is  one  of  our  few  remaining  pleas- 
ures, my  intended  letter  has  remained  in  my  head 
up  to  now.  On  returning  from  a  nine  days* 
leave  to  London  the  other  day,  however,  I  found 
two  letters  from  you  awaiting  me  and  was  re- 
proached into  effort. 

War's  a  queer  game — not  at  all  what  one's 
civilian  mind  imagined ;  it's  far  more  horrible  and 
less  exciting.  The  horrors  which  the  civilian 
mind  dreads  most  are  mutilation  and  death.     Out 


126  CARRY  ON 

here  we  rarely  think  about  them ;  the  thing  which 
wears  on  one  most  and  calls  out  his  gravest  cour- 
age is  the  endless  sequence  of  physical  discom- 
fort. Not  to  be  able  to  wash,  not  to  be  able  to 
sleep,  to  have  to  be  wet  and  cold  for  long  periods 
at  a  stretch,  to  find  mud  on  your  person,  in  your 
food,  to  have  to  stand  in  mud,  see  mud,  sleep  in 
mud  and  to  continue  to  smile — that's  what  tests 
courage.  Our  chaps  are  splendid.  They're  not 
the  hair-brained  idiots  that  some  war-correspond- 
ents depict  from  day  to  day.  They're  perfectly 
sane  people  who  know  to  a  fraction  what  they're 
up  against,  but  who  carry  on  with  a  grim  good- 
nature and  a  determination  to  win  with  a  smile. 
I  never  before  appreciated  as  I  do  to-day  the 
latent  capacity  for  big-hearted  endurance  that  is 
in  the  heart  of  every  man.  Here  are  apparently 
quite  ordinary  chaps — chaps  who  washed,  liked 
theatres,  loved  kiddies  and  sweethearts,  had  a 
zest  for  life — they're  bankrupt  of  all  pleasures 
except  the  supreme  pleasure  of  knowing  that 
they're  doing  the  ordinary  and  finest  thing  of 
which  they  are  capable.  There  are  millions  to 
whom  the  mere  consciousness  of  doing  their  duty 
has  brought  an  heretofore  unexperienced  peace 
of  mind.  For  myself  I  was  never  happier  than 
I  am  at  present;  there's  a  novel  zip  added  to  life 
by  the  daily  risks  and  the  knowledge  that  at  last 


CARRY  ON  127 

you're  doing  something  into  which  no  trace  of 
selfishness  enters.  One  can  only  die  once;  the 
chief  concern  that  matters  is  how  and  not  when 
you  die.  I  don't  pity  the  weary  men  who  have 
attained  eternal  leisure  in  the  corruption  of  our 
shell- furrowed  battles ;  they  "went  West"  in  their 
supreme  moment.  The  men  I  pity  are  those  who 
could  not  hear  the  call  of  duty  and  whose  con- 
sciences will  grow  more  flabby  every  day.  With 
the  brutal  roar  of  the  first  Prussian  gun  the 
cry  came  to  the  civilised  world,  "Follow  thou 
me,"  just  as  truly  as  it  did  in  Palestine.  Men  went 
to  their  Calvary  singing  Tipperary,  rubbish, 
rhymed  doggerel,  but  their  spirit  was  equal  to 
that  of  any  Christian  martyr  in  a  Roman  amphi- 
theatre. "Greater  love  hath  no  man  than  this, 
that  he  lay  down  his  life  for  his  friend."  Our 
chaps  are  doing  that  consciously,  willingly,  al- 
most without  bitterness  towards  their  enemies; 
for  the  rest  it  doesn't  matter  whether  they  sing 
hymns  or  ragtime.  They've  followed  their 
ideal — freedom — and  died  for  it.  A  former  age 
expressed  itself  in  Gregorian  chants ;  ours,  no  less 
sincerely,  disguises  its  feelings  in  ragtime. 

Since  September  I  have  been  less  than  a  month 
out  of  action.  The  game  doesn't  pall  as  time 
goef  on — it  fascinates.  We've  got  to  win  so  that 
men  may  never  again  be  tortured  by  the  ingenious 


128  CARRY  ON 

inquisition  of  modern  warfare.  The  winning  of 
the  war  becomes  a  personal  affair  to  the  chaps 
who  are  fighting.  The  world  whicli  sits  behind 
the  lines,  buys  extra  specials  of  the  daily  papers 
and  eats  three  square  meals  a  day,  will  never 
know  what  this  other  world  has  endured  for  its 
safety,  for  no  man  of  this  other  world  will  have 
the  vocabulary  in  which  to  tell.  But  don't  for 
a  moment  mistake  me — we're  grimly  happy. 

What  a  serial  I'll  write  for  you  if  I  emerge 
from  this  turmoil!  Thank  God,  my  outlook  is 
all  altered.  I  don't  want  to  live  any  longer — 
only  to  live  well. 

Good-bye  and  good  luck. 
Yours, 

CoNiNGSBY  Dawson. 


XLVIII 

February  Sth,  1917. 

My  Dearest  Mother  : 

Aren't  the  papers  good  reading  now-a- 
days  with  nothing  to  record  but  success?  It 
gives  us  hope  that  at  last,  anyway  before  the  year 
is  out,  the  war  must  end.  As  you  know,  I  am  at 
the  artillery  school  back  of  the  lines  for  a  month, 
taking  an  extra  course.  I  have  been  meeting  a 
great  many  young  officers  from  all  over  the  world 


CARRY  ON  129 

and  have  listened  to  them  discussing  their  pro- 
gram for  when  peace  is  declared.  Very  few  of 
them  have  any  plans  or  prospects.  Most  of  them 
had  just  started  on  some  course  of  professional 
training  to  which  they  won't  have  the  energy  to 
go  back  after  a  two  years'  interruption.  The 
question  one  asks  is  how  will  all  these  men  be  re- 
absorbed into  civilian  life.  I'm  afraid  the  result 
will  be  a  vast  host  of  men  with  promising  pasts 
and  highly  uncertain  futures.  We  shall  be  a  holi- 
day world  without  an  income.  Fm  afraid  the 
hero-worship  attitude  will  soon  change  to  im- 
patience when  the  soldiers  beat  their  swords  into 
ploughshares  and  then  confess  that  they  have 
never  been  taught  to  plough.  That's  where  I 
shall  score — by  beating  my  sword  into  a  pen. 

But  what  to  write  about !     Everything  will 

seem  so  little  and  inconsequential  after  seeing 
armies  marching  to  mud  and  death,  and  people 
will  soon  get  tired  of  hearing  about  that.  It 
seems  as  though  war  does  to  the  individual  what 
it  does  to  the  landscapes  it  attacks — obliterates 
everything  personal  and  characteristic.  A  valley, 
when  a  battle  has  done  with  it,  is  nothing  but 
earth — exactly  what  it  was  when  God  said,  "Let 
there  be  Light;"  a  man  just  something  with  a 
mind  purged  of  the  past  and  ready  to  observe 
afresh.     I  question  whether  a  return  to  old  en- 


I30  CARRY  ON 

vironments  will  ever  restore  to  us  the  whole  of 
our  old  tastes  and  affections.  War  is,  I  think, 
utterly  destructive.  It  doesn't  even  create  cour- 
age— it  only  finds  it  in  the  soul  of  a  man.  And 
yet  there  is  one  quality  which  will  survive  the 
war  and  help  us  to  face  the  temptations  of  peace 
— that  same  courage  which  most  of  us  have  un- 
consciously discovered  out  here. 

Well,  my  dear,  I  have  little  news — at  least, 
none  that  I  can  tell.  I'm  just  about  recovered 
from  an  attack  of  "flu."  I  want  to  get  thoroughly 
rid  of  it  before  I  go  back  to  my  battery.  I  hope 
you  all  keep  well.  God  bless  you  all. 
Yours  ever, 

Con. 

XLIX 

February  6th,  1917. 
My  Very  Dear  M.  : 

I  read  in  to-day's  paper  that  U.  S.  A. 
threatens  to  come  over  and  help  us.  I  wish 
she  would.  The  very  thought  of  the  possibility 
fills  me  with  joy.  I've  been  light-headed  all  day. 
It  would  be  so  ripping  to  live  among  people, 
when  the  war  is  ended,  of  whom  you  need  not 
be  ashamed.  Somewhere  deep  down  in  my  heart 
I've  felt  a  sadness  ever  since  I've  been  out  here, 
at  America's  lack  of  gallantry — it's  so  easy  to 


CARRY  ON  131 

find  excuses  for  not  climbing  to  Calvary;  sacri- 
fice was  always  too  noble  to  be  sensible.  I 
would  like  to  see  the  country  of  our  adoption  be- 
come splendidly  irrational  even  at  this  eleventh 
hour  in  the  game;  it  would  redeem  her  in  the 
world's  eyes.  She  doesn't  know  what  she's 
losing.  From  these  carcase-strewn  fields  of 
khaki  there's  a  cleansing  wind  blowing  for  the 
nations  that  have  died.  Though  there  was  only 
one  Englishman  left  to  carry  on  the  race  when 
this  war  is  victoriously  ended,  I  would  give  more 
for  the  future  of  England  than  for  the  future  of 
America  with  her  ninety  millions  whose  sluggish 
blood  was  not  stirred  by  the  call  of  duty.  It's 
bigness  of  soul  that  makes  nations  great  and  not 
population.  Money,  comfort,  limousines  and 
ragtime  are  not  the  requisites  of  men  when 
heroes  are  dying.  I  hate  the  thought  of  Fifth 
Avenue,  with  its  pretty  faces,  its  fashions,  its 
smiling  frivolity.  America  as  a  great  nation  will 
die,  as  all  coward  civilisations  have  died,  unless 
she  accepts  the  stigmata  of  sacrifice,  which  a 
divine  opportunity  again  offers  her. 

If  it  were  but  possible  to  show  those  ninety 
millions  one  battlefield  with  its  sprawling  dead, 
its  pity,  its  marvellous  forgetfulness  of  self,  I 
think  then — no,  they  wouldn't  be  afraid.  Fear 
isn't    the    emotion    one    feels — thev    would    ex- 


132  CARRY  ON 

perience  the  shame  of  living  when  so  many  have 
shed  their  youth  freely.  This  war  is  a  pro- 
longed moment  of  exultation  for  most  of  us — 
we  are  redeeming  ourselves  in  our  own  eyes. 
To  lay  down  one's  life  for  one's  friend  once 
seemed  impossible.  All  that  is  altered.  We  lay 
down  our  lives  that  the  future  generations  may 
be  good  and  kind,  and  so  we  can  contemplate 
oblivion  with  quiet  eyes.  Nothing  that  is  noblest 
that  the  Greeks  taught  is  unpractised  by  the 
simplest  men  out  here  to-day.  They  may  die 
childless,  but  their  example  will  father  the  imagi- 
nation of  all  the  coming  ages.  These  men,  in 
the  noble  indignation  of  a  great  ideal,  face  a 
worse  hell  than  the  most  ingenious  of  fanatics 
ever  planned  or  plotted.  Men  die  scorched  like 
moths  in  a  furnace,  blown  to  atoms,  gassed,  tor- 
tured. And  again  other  men  step  forward  to 
take  their  places  well  knowing  what  will  be  their 
fate.  Bodies  may  die,  but  the  spirit  of  England 
grows  greater  as  each  new  soul  speeds  upon  its 
way.  The  battened  souls  of  America  wifl  die  and 
be  buried.  I  believe  the  decision  of  the  next 
few  days  will  prove  to  be  the  crisis  in  America's 
nationhood.  If  she  refuses  the  pain  which  will 
save  her,  the  cancer  of  self -despising  will  rob  her 
of  her  life. 


CARRY  ON  133 

This  feeling  is  strong  with  us.     It's  past  mid- 
night, but  I  could  write  of  nothing  else  to-night 
God  bless  you. 

Yours  ever. 

Con. 


AMERICA  AND  OTHER  POEMS 

BY 

W.  J.  DAWSON 


"The  poem  which  gives  title  bids  fair  to  become  a  patri- 
otic classic." — Newark  Evening  Star. 

"There  are  many  moods  in  these  poems,  dramatic,  ten- 
der, grave,  idealistic." — The  Continent. 

"Charm  of  description  allied  with  rhythm  and  a  free 
fancy  characterize  'America  and  Other  Poems.'  " — Detroit 
Free  Press. 

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fitness  of  word  choice,  make  'America  and  Other  Poems, 
noteworthy  among  the  new  books  of  verse." — New  York 
Sun. 

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of  the  narrative  manner.  With  the  simplest  words  he  can 
paint  an  unforgettable  picture  and  make  the  reader  Ht- 
erally  feel  the  suffering  which  has  inspired  some  of  his 
finest  efforts." — San  Francisco  Chronicle. 

"There  is  poetry  in  every  page  dependent  not  so  much 
on  graceful  and  potent  phrase  and  rhythm — though  of 
these  there  is  no  lack — as  in  a  vigor  of  thought  and  ex- 
pression direct  enough  to  enlist  ready  and  confident  belief. 
The  lines  ring  true;  they  sink  deep  into  the  spirit  and  the 
understanding." — Hartford  Courant. 

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